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Second Thoughts of an 
Idle Fellow 



Second Thoughts of an 
Idle Fellow 

BY / 

JEROME K. JEROME 

Author of <* Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow," etc. 




NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 



898 






17131 

Copyright, 1898, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company, 







mnibetsitg ^Srcss : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



Contents 



Page 
On the Art of Making up One's Mind i 

On the Disadvantage of not Getting 

WHAT One Wants 26 

On the Exceptional Merit Attaching 

TO THE Things we Meant to Do . 48 
On the Preparation and Employment 

OF Love Philtres 84 

On the Delights and Benefits of 

Slavery no 

On the Care and Management of 

Women 138 

On the Minding of Other People's 

Business 162 

On the Time Wasted in Looking 

Before One Leaps 198 



vi Contents 

Page 
On the Nobility of Ourselves . . . 226 

On the Motherliness of Man . . . 250 

On the I NAD vis ability of Following 

Advice 278 

On the Playing of Marches at the 

Funerals of Marionettes .... 309 



The Second Thoughts of 
an Idle Fellow 



ON THE ART OF MAKING UP 
ONE'S MIND 

" IV T O Wj which would you advise, dear ? 

X^ You see, with the red I sha'n't be 
able to wear my magenta hat." 

" Well, then, why not have the grey ? " 

"Yes, yes, I think the grey will be more 
useful'' 

" It 's a good material." 

" Yes, and it 's a pretty grey. You know 
what I mean, dear ; not a common grey. 
Of course grey is always an uninteresting 
colour." 

" It *s quiet." 

"And then again, what I feel about the 
red is that it is so warm-looking. Red 
makes you feel warm even when you 're not 
warm. You know what I mean, dear." 

" Well, then, why not have the red ? It 
suits you — red. 



>> 



2 On the Art of 

" No ; do you really think so ? " 
" Well, when you Ve got a colour, I mean, 
of course." 

" Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, 
I think, on the whole, the grey is safer.'' 
" Then you will take the grey, madam." 
" Yes, I think I 'd better ; don't you, 
dear ? " 

"I like it myself very much." 
" And it is good wearing stuff. I shall 
have it trimmed with — Oh ! you have n't 
cut it off, have you ? " 

" I was just about to, madam." 
" Well, don't for a moment. Just let me 
have another look at the red. You see, 
dear, it has just occurred to me — that chin- 
chilla would look so well on the red." 
" So it would, dear." 
" And, you see, I 've got the chinchilla." 
" Then have the red. Why not ? " 
" Well, there is the hat I 'm thinking of" 
" You have n't anything else you could 
wear with that." 

" Nothing at all, and it would go so beau- 
tifully with the grey. — Yes, I think I 'IJ 
have the grey. It 's always a safe co our, — 
grey." 



Making up One's Mind 3 

" Fourteen yards I think you said, 
madam ? " 

" Yes, fourteen yards will be enough ; 
because I shall mix it with — one minute. 
You see, dear, if I take the grey I shall have 
nothing to wear with my black jacket." 

" Won't it go with grey ? " 

" Not well — not so well as with red." 

" I should have the red, then. You evi- 
dently fancy it yourself." 

" No, personally I prefer the grey. But 
then one must think o^ everything^ and — 
Good gracious ! that 's surely not the right 
time ? " 

" No, madam, it 's ten minutes slow. We 
always keep our clocks a little slow." 

" And we were to have been at Madame 
Jannaway's at a quarter past twelve. How 
long shopping does take ! Why, whatever 
time did we start ? " 

" About eleven, was n't it ? " 

" Half-past ten. I remember now ; be- 
cause, you know, we said we 'd start at 
half-past nine. We Ve been two hours 
already ! " 

" And we don't seem to have done much, 
do we P " 



4 On the Art of 

" Done literally nothing, and I meant to 
have done so much. I must go to Madame 
Jannaway's. Have you got my purse, dear ? 
Oh, it 's all right, I Ve got it." 

" Well, now you have n't decided whether 
you 're going to have the grey or the red." 

" I 'm sure I don't know what I do want 
now. I had made up my mind a minute 
ago, and now it 's all gone again — oh, yes, 
I remember, the red. Yes, I '11 have the 
red. No, I don't mean the red ; I mean the 
grey." 

" You were talking about the red last 
time, if you remember, dear." 

" Oh, so I was ; you 're quite right. That 's 
the worst of shopping. Do you know, I get i 
quite confused sometimes." 

" Then you will decide on the red, 
madam ? " I 

" Yes, yes, I sha'n't do any better, shall 
I, dear ? What do you think? You have n't 
got any other shades of red, have you ? 
This is such an ugly red." 

The shopman reminds her that she has 
seen all the other reds, and that this is the 
particular shade she selected and admired. 

" Oh, very well," she replied, with the air 



Making up One's Mind 5 

of one from whom all earthly cares are fall- 
ing, " I must take that, then, I suppose. I 
can*t be worried about it any longer. 1 Ve 
wasted half the morning already/' 

Outside she recollects three insuperable 
objections to the red, and four unanswerable 
'arguments why she should have selected the 
grey. She wonders would they change it, 
if she went back and asked to see the shop- 
walker ? Her friend, who wants her lunch, 
thinks not. 

" That is what I hate about shopping," 
she says. " One never has time to really 
thinkr 

She says she sha*n't go to that shop again. 

We laugh at her, but are we so very much 
better? Come, my superior male friend, 
have you never stood amid your wardrobe, 
undecided whether, in her eyes, you would 
appear more imposing clad in the rough 
tweed suit that so admirably displays your 
broad shoulders ; or in the orthodox black 
frock, that, after all, is perhaps more suitable 
to the figure of a man approaching — let 
us say, the nine-and-twenties, or, better still, 
why not riding costume ? Did we not 
hear her say how well Jones looked in his 



6 On the Art of 

top-boots and breeches, and, " hang it all," 
we have a better leg than Jones. What a 
pity riding-breeches are made so baggy now- 
adays. Why is it that male fashions tend 
more and more to hide the male leg ? As 
women have become less and less ashamed 
of theirs, we have become more and more 
reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, 
the tight-fitting pantaloons, the neat knee- 
breeches of our forefathers impossible to- 
day ? Are we grown more modest — or has 
there come about a falling off, rendering 
concealment advisable ? 

I can never understand, myself, why wo- 
men love us. It must be our honest worth, 
our sterling merit, that attracts them, — cer- 
tainly not our appearance, in a pair of tweed 
" dittos," black angora coat and vest, stand- 
up collar, and chimney-pot hat ! No, it 
must be our sheer force of character that 
compels their admiration. 

What a good time our ancestors must 
have had was borne in upon me when, on 
one occasion, I appeared in character at a 
fancy-dress ball. What I represented I am 
unable to say, and I don't particularly care. 
I only know it was something military. I 



Making up One's Mind 7 

also remember that the costume was two 
sizes too small for me in the chest, and 
thereabouts ; and three sizes too large for 
me in the hat. I padded the hat, and dined 
in the middle of the day off a chop and half 
a glass of soda-water. I have gained prizes 
as a boy for mathematics, also for scripture 
history, — not often, but I have done it. A 
literary critic, now dead, once praised a book 
of mine. I know there have been occasions 
when my conduct has won the approbation 
of good men; but never — never in my 
whole life — have I felt more proud, more 
satisfied with myself, than on that evening 
when, the last hook fastened, I gazed at my 
full-length Self in the cheval glass. I was a 
dream. I say it who should not ; but I am 
not the only one who said it. I was a glit- 
tering dream. The groundwork was red, 
trimmed with gold braid wherever there was 
room for gold braid ; and where there was 
no more possible room for gold braid there 
hung gold cords and tassels and straps. 
Gold buttons and buckles fastened me, gold 
embroidered belts and sashes caressed me, 
white horse-hair plumes waved o*er me. I 
am not sure that everything was in its proper 



8 On the Art of 

place, but I managed to get everything on 
somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. 
My success was a revelation to me of female 
human nature. Girls who had hitherto been 
cold and distant gathered round me, timidly 
solicitous of notice. Girls on whom I smiled 
lost their heads and gave themselves airs. 
Girls who were not introduced to me sulked 
and were rude to girls that had been. For 
one poor child, with whom I sat out two 
dances (at least she sat, while I stood grace- 
fully beside her — I had been advised, by 
the costumier, not to sit), I was sorry. He 
was a worthy young fellow, the son of a cot- 
ton broker, and he would have made her a 
good husband, I feel sure. But he was fool- 
ish to come as a beer bottle. 

Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old 
fashions have gone out. A week in that 
suit might have impaired my natural 
modesty. 

One wonders that fancy-dress balls are not 
more popular in this grey age of ours. The 
childish instinct to "dress up," to "make 
believe," is with us all. We grow so tired 
of being always ourselves. A tea-table dis- 
cussion, at which I once assisted, fell into 



Making up One's Mind 9 

this: Would any one of us, when it came 
to the point, change with anybody else, the 
poor man with the millionaire, the governess 
with the princess, — change not only outward 
circumstances and surroundings, but health 
and temperament, heart, brain, and soul, so 
that not one mental or physical particle of 
one's original self one would retain, save only 
memory. The general opinion was that we 
would not, but one lady maintained the 
affirmative. 

" Oh, no, you would n't really, dear," 
argued a friend ; " you think you would." 

" Yes, I would," persisted the first lady ; 
" I am tired of myself. I 'd even be you, 
for a change." <^ 

In my youth the question chiefly impor- 
tant to me was. What sort of man should 
I decide to be ? At nineteen one asks one- 
self this question ; at thirty-nine we say, " I 
wish Fate had n't made me this sort of man." 

In those days I was a reader of much well- 
meant advice to young men, and I gathered 
that, whether I should become a Sir Lance- 
lot, a Herr Teufelsdrockh, or an lago was a 
matter for my own individual choice. 
Whether I should go through life gaily or 



lo On the Art of 

gravely was a question the pros and cons of 
which I carefully considered. For patterns 
I turned to books. Byron was then still 
popular, and many of us made up our minds 
to be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary 
with the world and prone to soliloquy. I 
determined to join them. 

For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I 
did, it was with a weary, bitter smile, con- 
cealing a broken heart, — at least that was 
the intention. Shallow-minded observers 
misunderstood. 

" I know exactly how it feels," they would 
say, looking at me sympathetically, " 1 often 
have it myself. It 's the sudden change in 
the weather, I think ; " and they would 
press neat brandy upon me, and suggest 
ginger. 

Again, it is distressing to the young man, 
busy burying his secret sorrow under a 
mound of silence, to be slapped on the back 
by commonplace people and asked, " Well, 
how*s 'the hump' this morning?" and 
to hear his mood of dignified melancholy 
referred to, by those who should know 
better, as " the sulks." 

There are practical difficulties also in the 



Making up One's Mind II 

way of him who would play the Byronic 
young gentleman. He must be super- 
naturally wicked — or rather, must have been ; 
only, alas ! in the unliterary grammar of life, 
where the future tense stands first, and the 
past is formed, not from the indefinite, but 
from the present indicative, " to have been " 
is " to be ; " and to be wicked on a small in- 
come is impossible. The ruin of even the 
simplest of maidens costs money. In the 
Courts of Love one cannot sue in forma 
pauperis ; nor would it be the Byronic method. 

" To drown remembrance in the cup " 
sounds well, but then the " cup " to be fit- 
ting should be of some expensive brand. 
To drink deep of old Tokay or Asti is poet- 
ical ; but when one's purse necessitates that the 
draught, if it is to be deep enough to drown 
anything, should be of thin beer at five-and- 
nine the four and a half gallon cask, or some- 
thing similar in price, sin is robbed of its 
flavour. 

Possibly also — let me think it — the con- 
viction may have been within me that Vice, 
even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid 
thing, repulsive in the sunlight, that though 
— as rags and dirt to art — it may afford 



12 On the Art of 

picturesque material to Literature, it is an 
evil-smelling garment to the wearer, one 
that a good man, by reason of poverty of 
will, may come down to, but one to be 
avoided with all one's effort, discarded with 
returning mental prosperity. 

Be this as it may, I grew weary of training 
for a saturnine young man ; and in the 
midst of my doubt I chanced upon a book 
the hero of which was a debonair young 
buck, own cousin to Tom and Jerry. He 
attended fights, both of cocks and men, 
flirted with actresses, wrenched oflF door- 
knockers, extinguished street lamps, played 
many a merry jest upon many an unappre- 
ciative night watchman. For all the which he 
was much beloved by the women of the book. 
Why should not I flirt with actresses, put out 
street lamps, play pranks on policemen, and 
be beloved ? London life was changed since 
the days of my hero, but much remained, 
and the heart of woman is eternal. If no 
longer prize-fighting was to be had, at least 
there were boxing competitions, so-called, in 
dingy back parlours out Whitechapel way. 
Though cock-fighting was a lost sport, were 
there not damp cellars near the river where 



Making up One's Mind 13 

for twopence a gentleman might back mon- 
grel terriers to kill rats against time, and feel 
himself indeed a sportsman ? True, the atmos- 
phere of reckless gaiety, always surround- 
ing my hero, I missed myself from these 
scenes, finding in its place an atmosphere 
more suggestive of gin, stale tobacco, and 
nervous apprehension of the police ; but the 
essentials must have been the same, and the 
next morning I could exclaim, in the very 
words of my prototype, " Odds crickets, 
but I feel as though the devil himself were 
in my head. Peste take me for a fool ! " 

But in this direction likewise my fatal 
lack of means opposed me. (It affords 
much food to the philosophic mind, this 
influence of income upon character.) Even 
fifth-rate " boxing competitions," organised 
by " friendly leads," and ratting contests in 
Rotherhithe slums, become expensive when 
you happen to be the only gentleman present 
possessed of a collar, and are expected to do 
the honours of your class in dogs-nose. 
True, climbing lamp-posts and putting out 
the gas is fairly cheap, providing always you 
are not caught in the act, but as a recreation 
it lacks variety. Nor is the modern Lon- 



14 On the Art of 

don lamp-post adapted to sport. Anything 
more difficult to grip — anything with less 
"give*' in it — I have rarely clasped. The 
disgraceful amount of dirt allowed to accu- 
mulate upon it is another drawback from 
the cUmber's point of view. By the time 
you have swarmed up your third post a 
positive distaste for " gaiety " steals over 
you. Your desire is towards arnica and 
a bath. 

Nor in jokes at the expense of policemen 
is the fun entirely on your side. Maybe I 
did not proceed with judgment. It occurs 
to me now, looking back, that the neigh- 
bourhoods of Covent Garden and Great 
Marlborough Street were ill chosen for 
sport of this nature. To bonnet a fat 
policeman is excellent fooling. While he 
is struggling with his helmet you can ask 
him comic questions, and by the time he 
has got his head free you are out of sight. 
But the game should be played in a district 
where there is not an average of three con- 
stables to every dozen square yards. When 
two other policemen, who have had their 
eye on you for the past ten minutes, are 
watching the proceedings from just round 



Making up One's Mind 15 

the next corner, you have little or no lei- 
sure for due enjoyment of the situation. By 
the time you have run the whole length of 
Great TIchfield Street and twice round Ox- 
ford Market, you are of opinion that a joke 
should never be prolonged beyond the point 
at which there is danger of its becoming 
wearisome, and that the time has now ar- 
rived for home and friends. The " Law," 
on the other hand, now raised by reinforce- 
ments to a strength of six or seven men, is 
just beginning to enjoy the chase. You 
picture to yourself, while doing Hanover 
Square, the scene in Court the next morn- 
ing. You will be accused of being drunk 
and disorderly. It will be idle for you to 
explain to the magistrate (or to your rela- 
tions afterwards) that you were only trying 
to live up to a man who did this sort of 
thing in a book and was admired for it. 
You will be fined the usual forty shillings ; 
and on the next occasion of your calling at 
the Mayfields' the girls will be out, and 
Mrs. Mayfield, an excellent lady, who has 
always taken a motherly interest in you, will 
talk seriously to you and urge you to sign 
the pledge. 



1 6 On the Art of 

Thanks to your youth and constitution 
you shake off the pursuit at Netting Hill ; 
and, to avoid any chance of unpleasant con- 
tretemps on the return journey, walk home 
to Bloomsbury by way of Camden Town 
and Islington. 

I abandoned sportive tendencies as the 
result of a vow made by myself to Provi- 
dence, during the early hours of a certain 
Sunday morning, while clinging to the 
waterspout of an unpretentious house situ- 
ate in a side street off Soho. I put it to 
Providence as man to man. " Let me only 
get out of this," I think were the muttered 
words I used, " and no more ^ sport ' for 
me." Providence closed on the offer, and 
did let me get out of it. True, it was a 
complicated " get out," involving a broken 
skylight and three gas globes, two hours in 
a coal cellar, and a sovereign to a potman for 
the loan of an ulster ; and when at last, se- 
cure in my chamber, I took stock of myself, 
— what was left of me, — I could not but 
reflect that Providence might have done the 
job neater. Yet I experienced no desire to 
escape the terms of the covenant; my in- 
clining for the future was towards a life of 
simplicity. 



Making up One's Mind 17 

Accordingly, I cast about for a new char- 
acter, and found one to suit me. The Ger- 
man Professor was becoming popular as a 
hero about this period. He wore his hair 
long and was otherwise untidy, but he had 
" a heart of steel," occasionally of gold. 
The majority of folks in the book, judging 
him from his exterior, together with his 
conversation, — in broken English, dealing 
chiefly with his dead mother and his little 
sister Lisa, — dubbed him uninteresting, 
but then they did not know about the heart. 
His chief possession was a lame dog which 
he had rescued from a brutal mob ; and 
when he was not talking broken English 
he was nursing this dog. 

But his speciality was stopping runaway 
horses, thereby saving the heroine*s life. 
This, combined with the broken English 
and the dog, rendered him irresistible. 

He seemed a peaceful, amiable sort of 
creature, and I decided to try him. I could 
not of course be a German professor, but I 
could and did wear my hair long in spite 
of much public advice to the contrary, voiced 
chiefly by small boys. I endeavoured to 
obtain possession of a lame dog, but failed. 



1 8 On the Art of 

A one-eyed dealer in Seven Dials, to whom, 
as a last resource, I applied, offered to lame 
one for me for an extra five shillings, but 
this suggestion I declined. I came across 
an uncanny-looking mongrel late one night. 
He was not lame, but he seemed pretty 
sick; and, feeling I was not robbing any- 
body of anything very valuable, I lured him 
home and nursed him. I fancy I must have 
over-nursed him. He got so healthy in the 
end, there was no doing anything with him. 
He was an ill-conditioned cur, and he was 
too old to be taught. He became the curse 
of the neighbourhood. His idea of sport 
was killing chickens and sneaking rabbits 
from outside poulterers' shops. For recre- 
ation he killed cats and frightened small 
children by yelping round their legs. There 
were times when I could have lamed him 
myself, if only I could have got hold of 
him. I made nothing by running that dog, 
— nothing whatever. People, instead of 
admiring me for nursing him back to life, 
called me a fool, and said that if I did n't 
drown the brute, they would. He spoilt 
my character utterly — I mean my charac- 
ter at this period. It is difficult to pose as 



Making up One's Mind 19 

a young man with a heart of gold, when dis- 
covered in the middle of the road throwing 
stones at your own dog ; and stones were 
the only things that would reach and influ- 
ence him. 

I was also hampered by a scarcity in run- 
away horses. The horse of our suburb was 
not that type of horse. Once and only 
once did an opportunity offer itself for 
practice. It was a good opportunity, inas- 
much as he was not running away very 
greatly. Indeed, I doubt if he knew him- 
self that he was running away. It tran- 
spired afterwards that it was a habit of his, 
after waiting for his driver outside the Rose 
and Crown for what he considered to be a 
reasonable period, to trot home on his own 
account. He passed me going about seven 
miles an hour, with the reins dragging con- 
veniently beside him. He was the very 
thing for a beginner, and I prepared myself. 
At the critical moment, however, a couple 
of officious policemen pushed me aside and 
did it themselves. 

There was nothing for me to regret, as 
the matter turned out. I should only have 
rescued a bald-headed commercial traveller. 



20 On the Art of 

very drunk, who swore horribly and pelted 
the crowd with empty collar-boxes. 

From the window of a very high flat I 
once watched three men resolved to stop a 
runaway horse. Each man marched delib- 
erately into the middle of the road and took 
up his stand. My window was too far away 
for me to see their faces, but their attitude 
suggested heroism unto death. The first 
man, as the horse came charging towards 
him, faced it with his arms spread out. He 
never flinched until the horse was within 
about twenty yards of him. Then, as the 
animal was evidently determined to continue 
its wild career, there was nothing left for him 
to do but to retire again to the kerb, where 
he stood looking after it with evident sorrow, 
as though saying to himself, " Oh, well, if 
you are going to be headstrong I have done 
with you." 

The second man, on the catastrophe being 
thus left clear for him, without a moment's 
hesitation, walked up a bye-street and disap- 
peared. The third man stood his ground, 
and as the horse passed him yelled at it. I 
could not hear what he said. I have not 
the slightest doubt it was excellent advice. 



Making up One's Mind 21 

but the animal was apparently too excited 
even to listen. The first and the third man 
met afterwards and discussed the matter 
sympathetically. I judged they were re- 
gretting the pig-headedness of runaway 
horses in general, and hoping that nobody 
had been hurt. 

I forget the other characters I assumed 
about this period. One I know that got 
me into a good deal of trouble was that of a 
downright, honest, hearty, outspoken young 
man who always said what he meant. 

I never knew but one man who made a 
real success of speaking his mind. I have 
heard him slap the table with his open hand 
and exclaim, — 

" You want me to flatter you, to stuff 
you up with a pack of lies. That 's not me, 
that *s not Jim Compton. But if you care 
for my honest opinion, all I can say is, that 
child is the most marvellous performer on 
the piano I Ve ever heard. I don't say she 
is a genius, but I have heard Liszt and 
Metzler and all the crack players, and I 
prefer her. That 's my opinion. I speak 
my mind, and I can't help it if you 're 
offended." 



22 On the Art of 

" How refreshing/' the parents would say, 
" to come across a man who is not afraid to 
say what he really thinks ! Why are we not 
all outspoken ? " 

The last character I attempted I thought 
would be easy to assume. It was that of a 
much admired and beloved young man, whose 
great charm lay in the fact that he was always 
just — himself Other people posed and 
acted. He never made any effort to be any- 
thing but his own natural, simple self 

I thought I also would be my own natural, 
simple self But then the question arose. 
What was my own natural, simple self .f* 

That was the preliminary problem I had 
to solve ; I have not solved it to this day. 
What am I ? I am a great gentleman, 
walking through the world with dauntless 
heart and head erect, scornful of all mean- 
ness, impatient of all littleness. I am a 
mean-thinking, little-daring man, — the type 
of man that I of the dauntless heart and 
the erect head despise greatly, crawling to 
a poor end by devious ways, cringing to the 
strong, timid of all pain. I — but, dear 
reader, I will not pain your sensitive ears 
with details I could give you, showing how 



Making up One's Mind 23 

contemptible a creature this wretched I 
happens to be. Nor would you understand 
me. You would only be astonished, dis- 
covering that such disreputable specimens 
of humanity contrive to exist in this age. 
It is best, my dear sir or madam, you should 
remain ignorant of these evil persons. Let 
me not trouble you with knowledge. 

I am a philosopher, greeting alike the 
thunder and the sunshine with frolic wel- 
come. Only now and then, when all things 
do not fall exactly as I wish them, when 
foolish, wicked people will persist in doing 
foolish, wicked acts, affecting my comfort and 
happiness, I rage and fret a goodish deal. 

As Heine said of himself, I am knight, 
too, of the Holy Grail, valiant for the 
Truth, reverent of all women, honouring all 
men, eager to yield life to the service of my 
great Captain. 

And next moment I find myself in the 
enemy's lines, fighting under the black 
banner. (It must be confusing to these 
opposing generals, all their soldiers being 
deserters from both armies.) What are 
women but men's playthings ? Shall there 
be no more cakes and ale for me, because 



24 On the Art of 

thou art virtuous ? What are men but 
hungry dogs, contending each against each 
for a limited supply of bones ? Do others 
lest thou be done. What is the Truth but 
an unexploded lie ? 

I am a lover of all living things. You, 
my poor sister, struggling with your heavy 
burden on your lonely way, I would kiss 
the tears from your worn cheeks, lighten 
with my love the darkness around your feet. 
You, my patient brother, breathing hard as 
round and round you tramp the trodden 
path, like some poor half-blind gin-horse, 
stripes your only encouragement, scanty 
store of dry chaff in your manger, I would 
jog beside you, taking the strain a little from 
your aching shoulders ; and we would walk 
nodding our heads side by side, and you, 
remembering, should tell me of the fields 
where long ago you played, of the gallant 
races that you ran and won. And you, little 
pinched brats, with wondering eyes, looking 
from dirt-incrusted faces, I would take you 
in my arms and tell you fairy stories. Into 
the sweet land of make-believe we would 
wander, leaving the sad old world behind us 
for a time, and you should be Princes and 
Princesses and know Love. 



Making up One's Mind 25 

But, again, a selfish, greedy man comes 
often and sits in my clothes, — a man who 
frets away his life, planning how to get more 
money, more food, more clothes, more 
pleasures for himself; a man so busy think- 
ing of the many things he needs he has no 
time to dwell upon the needs of others. 
He deems himself the centre of the uni- 
verse. You would imagine, hearing him 
grumbling, that the world had been created 
and got ready against the time when he 
should come to take his pleasure in it. He 
would push and trample, heedless, reachmg 
towards these many desires of his; and 
when, grabbing, he misses, he curses Heaven 
for its injustice, and men and women for 
getting in his way. He is not a nice man 
in any way. I wish, as I say, he would 
not come so often and sit in my clothes. 
He persists that he is I, and that I am only 
a sentimental fool, spoiling his chances. 
Sometimes, for a while, I get rid of him, 
but he always comes back; and then he 
gets rid of me and I become him. It is 
very confusing. Sometimes I wonder if I 
really am I. 



ON THE DISADVANTAGE OF 

NOT GETTING WHAT ONE 

WANTS 

LONG, long ago, when you and I, dear 
Reader, were young, when the fairies 
dwelt in the hearts of the roses, when the 
moonbeams bent each night beneath the 
weight of angels' feet, there lived a good, 
wise man. Or rather, I should say, there 
had lived, for at the time of which I speak 
the poor old gentleman lay dying. Waiting 
each moment the dread summons, he fell 
a-musing on the life that stretched far back 
behind him. How full it seemed to him at 
that moment of follies and mistakes, bring- 
ing bitter tears not to himself alone, but to 
others also ! How much brighter a road 
might it have been, had he been wiser, had 
he known ! 

" Ah, me ! " said the good old gentleman, 
" if only I could live my life again in the 
light of experience ! '* 



Getting what One Wants 27 

Now as he spoke these words he felt the 
drawing near to him of a Presence, and 
thinking it was the One whom he expected, 
^ raising himself a little from his bed, he feebly- 
cried, " I am ready." 

But a hand forced him gently back, a 
voice saying, " Not yet ; I bring life, not 
death. Your wish shall be granted. You 
shall live your life again, and the knowledge 
of the past shall be with you to guide you. 
See you use it. I will come again." 

Then a sleep fell upon the good man, and 
when he awoke he was again a little child, 
lying in his mother's arms ; but locked 
within his brain was the knowledge of the 
life that he had lived already. 

So once more he lived and loved and 
laboured. So a second time he lay an old, 
worn man with life behind him. And the 
angel stood again beside his bed; and the 
voice said, — 

" Well, are you content now ? " 

" I am well content," said the old gentle- 
man. " Let Death come." 

" And have you understood ? " asked the 
angel. 

" I think so," was the answer ; " that ex- 



28 On the Disadvantage of not 

perience is but as of the memory of the 
pathways he has trod to a traveller journey- 
ing ever onward into an unknown land. I 
have been wise only to reap the reward of 
folly. Knowledge has ofttimes kept me 
from my good. I have avoided my old 
mistakes only to fall into others that I knew 
not of. I have reached the old errors by 
new roads. Where I have escaped sorrow I 
have lost joy. Where I have grasped hap- 
piness I have plucked pain also. Now let 
me go with Death that I may learn." 

Which was so like the angel of that 
period, the giving of a gift, bringing to a 
man only more trouble. Maybe I am over- 
rating my coolness of judgment under 
somewhat startling circumstances, but I am 
inclined to think that, had I lived in those 
days, and had a fairy or an angel come to 
me, wanting to give me something, — my 
soul's desire, or the sum of my ambition, or 
any trifle of that kind, — I should have been 
short with him. 

" You pack up that precious bag of tricks 
of yours," I should have said to him (it 
would have been rude, but that is how I 
should have felt), " and get outside with it. 



Getting what One Wants 29 

I 'm not taking anything in your line to-day. 
I don't require any supernatural aid to get 
me into trouble. All the worry I want I can 
get down here, so it *s no good your calling. 
You take that little joke of yours — I don't 
know what it is, but I know enough not to 
want to know — and run it off on some 
other idiot. I 'm not priggish. I have no 
objection to an innocent game of ' catch- 
questions ' in the ordinary way, and when I 
get a turn myself But if I Ve got to 
pay every time, and the stakes are to be my 
earthly happiness plus my future existence 
— why, I don't play. There was the case 
of Midas ; a nice, shabby trick you fellows 
played off upon him ! making pretence you 
did not understand him, twisting the poor 
old fellow's words round just for all the 
world as though you were a pack of Old 
Bailey lawyers trying to trip up a witness ; 
I 'm ashamed of the lot of you, and I tell 
you so, — coming down here, fooling poor 
unsuspecting mortals with your nonsense, as 
though we had not enough to harry us as it 
was. Then there was that other case of the 
poor old peasant couple to whom you prom- 
ised three wishes, the whole thing ending in 



30 On the Disadvantage of not 

a black pudding. And they never got even 
that. You thought that funny, I suppose. 
That was your fairy humour ! A pity, I 
say, you have not, all of you, something 
better to do with your time. As I said be- 
fore, you take that celestial ' Joe Miller ' of 
yours and work it off on somebody else. I 
have read my fairy lore, and I have read my 
mythology, and I don't want any of your 
blessings. And what 's more, I 'm not going 
to have them. When I want blessings I will 
put up with the usual sort we are accustomed 
to down here. You know the ones I mean, 
the disguised brand, — the blessings that no 
human being would think were blessings, if 
he were not told ; the blessings that don't 
look like blessings, that don't feel like bless- 
ings ; that, as a matter of fact, are not bless- 
ings, practically speaking ; the blessings 
that other people think are blessings for us 
and that we don't. They 've got their draw- 
backs, but they are better than yours, at any 
rate, and they are sooner over. I don't want 
your blessings at any price. If you leave 
one here, I shall simply throw it out after 



vou." 



I feel confident I should have answered 



Getting what One Wants 3 1 

like that, and I feel it would has^e done 
good. Somebody ought to have spoken 
plainly, because with fairies and angels of 
that sort fooling about, no one was ever 
safe for a moment. Children could hardly 
have been allowed outside the door. One 
never could have told what silly trick some 
would-be funny fairy might be waiting to 
play off on them. The poor child would 
not know, and would think it was getting 
something worth having. The wonder to 
me is that some of those angels did n't get 
tarred and feathered. 

I am doubtful whether even Cinderella's 
luck was quite as satisfying as we are led to 
believe. After the carpetless kitchen and 
the black beetles, how beautiful the palace 
must have seemed — for the first year, per- 
haps for the first two. And the Prince ! 
how loving, how gallant, how tender — for 
the first year, perhaps for the first two. 
And after ? You see he was a Prince, 
brought up in a Court, the atmosphere of 
which is not conducive to the development 
of the domestic virtues; and she — was Cin- 
derella. And then the marriage altogether 
was rather a hurried affair. Oh, yes, she is 



3 2 On the Disadvantage of not 

a good, loving little woman ; but perhaps 
our Royal Highness-ship did act too much 
on the impulse of the moment. It was her 
dear, dainty feet that danced their way into 
our heart. How they flashed and twinkled, 
cased in those fairy slippers ! How like a 
lily among tulips she moved that night 
amid the over-gorgeous Court dames ! She 
was so sweet, so fresh, so different to all 
the others whom we knew so well. How 
happy she looked as she put her trembling 
little hand in ours ! What possibilities 
might lie behind those drooping lashes ! 
And we were in amorous mood that night, 
the music in our feet, the flash and gUtter 
in our eyes. And then, to pique us fur- 
ther, she disappeared as suddenly and 
strangely as she had come. Who was she ? 
Whence came she? What was the mystery 
surrounding her ? Was she only a deli- 
cious dream, a haunting phantasy that we 
should never look upon again, never clasp 
again within our longing arms ? Was our 
heart to be for ever hungry, haunted by the 
memory of — No, by heavens, she is real, 
and a woman. Here is her dear slipper, 
made surely to be kissed; of a size too that 



Getting what One Wants 33 

a man may well wear within the breast 
of his doublet. Had any woman — nay, 
fairy, angel, such dear feet? Search the 
whole kingdom through, but find her, find 
her. The gods have heard our prayers 
and given us this clue. " Suppose she be 
not all she seemed! Suppose she be not 
of birth fit to mate with our noble house ! " 
Out upon thee, for an earth-bound, blind 
curmudgeon of a Lord High Chancellor ! 
How could a woman whom such slipper 
fitted, be but of the noblest and the best, 
as far above us, mere Princelet that we are, 
as the stars in heaven are brighter than thy 
dull old eyes? Go, search the kingdom, we 
tell thee, from east to west, from north to 
south, and see to it that thou findest her, or 
it shall go hard with thee. By Venus, be 
she a swineherd*s daughter, she shall be our 
Queen — an she deign to accept of us, and 
of our kingdom. 

Ah, well, of course it was not a wise piece 
of business, that goes without saying; but 
we were young, and princes are only human. 
Poor child, she could not help her educa- 
tion, or rather her lack of it. Dear httle 
thing, the wonder is that she has contrived 
3 



34 On the Disadvantage of not 

to be no more ignorant than she is, dragged 
up as she was, neglected and overworked. 
Nor does life in a kitchen, amid the com- 
panionship of peasants and menials, tend to 
foster the intellect. Who can blame her 
for being shy and somewhat dull of thought ^ 
Not we, generous-minded, kind-hearted 
Prince that we are. And she is very affec- 
tionate. The family are trying, certainly ; 
father-in-law not a bad sort, though a little 
prosy when upon the subject of his domes- 
tic troubles, and a little too fond of his 
glass ; mamma-in-law, and those two ugly, 
ill-mannered sisters, decidedly a nuisance 
about the palace. Yet what can we do ? 
They are our relations now, and they don't 
forget to let us know it. Well, well, we 
had to expect that, and things might have 
been worse. Anyhow, she is not jealous — 
thank goodness. 

So the day comes when poor little Cin- 
derella sits alone of a night in the beautiful 
palace. The courtiers have gone home in 
their carriages. The Lord High Chancellor 
has bowed himself out backwards. The 
Gold-Stick-in-Waiting and the Grooms of 
the Chamber have gone to their beds. The 



Getting what One Wants 35 

Maids of Honour have said '^ Good-night," 
and drifted out of the door, laughing and 
whispering among themselves. The clock 
strikes twelve — one — two, and still no 
footstep creaks upon the stair. Once it 
followed swiftly upon the " good-night " of 
the maids, who did not laugh or whisper 
then. 

At last the door opens, and the Prince 
enters, none too pleased at finding Cinder- 
ella still awake. "So sorry Tm late, my 
love — detained on affairs of state. Foreign 
policy very complicated, dear. Have only 
just this moment left the Council Chamber." 

And little Cinderella, while the Prince 
sleeps, lies sobbing out her poor sad heart 
into the beautiful royal pillow, embroidered 
with the royal arms and edged with the 
royal monogram in lace. "Why did he 
ever marry me ? I should have been hap- 
pier in the old kitchen. The black beetles 
did frighten me a little, but there was always 
the dear old cat; and sometimes, when 
mother and the girls were out, papa would 
call softly down the kitchen stairs for me to 
come up, and we would have such a merry 
evening together, and sup off sausages. 



36 On the Disadvantage of not 

Dear old dad, I hardly ever see him now. 
And then, when my work was done, how 
pleasant it was to sit in front of the fire, and 
dream of the wonderful things that would 
come to me some day ! I was always going 
to be a princess, even in my dreams, and 
live in a palace, but it was so different to 
this. Oh, how I hate it, this beastly palace 
where everybody sneers at me — I know 
they do, though they bow and scrape and 
pretend to be so polite. And I *m not 
clever and smart as they are. I hate them. 
I hate these bold-faced women who are 
always here. That is the worst of a palace, 
everybody can come in. Oh, I hate every- 
body and everything. Oh, godmamma, 
godmamma, come and take me away. 
Take me back to my old kitchen. Give 
me back my old poor frock. Let me dance 
again with the fire-tongs for a partner, and 
be happy, dreaming." 

Poor little Cinderella, perhaps it would 
have been better had godmamma been less 
ambitious for you, dear ; had you married 
some good, honest yeoman, who would 
never have known that you were not bril- 
liant, who would have loved you because 



\ 



Getting what One Wants ;^y 

you were just amiable and pretty ; had your 
kingdom been only a farmhouse, where your 
knowledge of domestic economy, gained so 
hardly, would have been useful ; where you 
would have shone instead of being over- 
shadowed ; where papa would have dropped 
in of an evening to smoke his pipe and 
escape from his domestic wrangles ; where 
you would have been real Queen. 

But then you know, dear, you would not 
have been content. Ah, yes, with your 
present experience, now you know that 
queens as well as little drudges have their 
troubles, but without that experience ? You 
would have looked in the glass when you 
were alone; you would have looked at your 
shapely hands and feet, and the shadows 
would have crossed your pretty face. " Yes," 
you would have said to yourself, " John 
is a dear, kind fellow, and I love him very 
much, and all that, but — " and the old 
dreams, dreamt in the old low-ceilinged 
kitchen before the dying fire, would have 
come back to you, and you would have been 
discontented then as now, only in a different 
way. Oh, yes, you would, Cinderella, though 
you gravely shake your gold-crowned head. 



38 On the Disadvantage of not 

And let me tell you why. It is because you 
are a woman, and the fate of all of us, men 
and women alike, is to be for ever wanting 
what we have not, and to be finding, when 
we have it, that it is not what we wanted. 
That is the law of life, dear. Do you think, 
as you lie upon the floor with your head 
upon your arms, that you are the only 
woman whose tears are soaking into the 
hearth-rug at that moment ? My dear Prin- 
cess, if you could creep unseen about your 
city, peeping at will through the curtain- 
shielded windows, you would come to think 
that all the world was little else than a big 
nursery full of crying children with none to 
comfort them. The doll is broken : no 
longer it sweetly squeaks in answer to our 
pressure, " I love you ; kiss me.'* The 
drum lies silent with the drumstick inside ; 
no longer do we make a brave noise in the 
nursery. The box of tea-things we have 
clumsily put our foot upon ; there will be 
no more merry parties around the three- 
legged stool. The tin trumpet will not play 
the note we want to sound ; the wooden 
bricks keep falling down ; the toy cannon 
has exploded and burnt our fingers. Never 



Getting what One Wants 39 

mind, little man, little woman ; we will try 
and mend things to-morrow. 

And, after all, Cinderella dear, you do live 
in a fine palace, and you have jewels and 
grand dresses and— No, no, do not be 
indignant with me. Did not you dream of 
these things as well as of love ? Come now, 
be honest. It was always a pnnce, was it 
not, or, at the least, an exceedingly well-to-do 
party, that handsome young gentleman who 
bowed to you so gallantly from the red 
embers ? He was never a virtuous young 
commercial traveller, or cultured clerk, earn- 
ing a salary of three pounds a week, was he, 
Cinderella? Yet there are many charming 
commercial travellers, many delightful clerks 
with limited incomes, quite sufficient, how- 
ever, to a sensible man and woman desiring 
but each other's love. Why was it always a 
prince, Cinderella ? Had the palace and the 
liveried servants, and the carriages and horses, 
and the jewels and the dresses, nothing to do 
with the dream ? . 

No, Cinderella, you were human, that is 
all The artist shivering in his conventional 
attic, dreaming of fame! — do you think he 
is not hoping she will come to his loving 



40 On the Disadvantage of not 

arms In the form Jove came to Danae? Do 
you think he is not reckoning also upon the 
good dinners and the big cigars, the fur coat 
and the diamond studs, that her visits will 
enable him to purchase ? 

There is a certain picture very popular 
just now. You may see it, Cinderella, in 
many of the shop-windows of the town. It 
is called " The Dream of Love," and it rep- 
resents a beautiful young girl, sleeping in a 
very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed. 
Indeed, one hopes, for the sleeper's sake, that 
the night is warm, and that the room is fairly 
free from draughts. A ladder of light streams 
down from the sky into the room, and upon 
this ladder crowd and jostle one another a 
small army of plump Cupids, each one laden 
with some pledge of love. Two of the imps 
are emptying a sack of jewels upon the floor. 
Four others are bearing, well displayed, a 
magnificent dress (a " confection," I believe, 
is the proper term) cut somewhat low, but 
making up in train what is lacking elsewhere. 
Others bear bonnet-boxes from which peep 
stylish toques and bewitching hoods. Some, 
representing evidently wholesale houses, 
stagger, under silks and satins in the piece. 



I 



Getting what One Wants 41 

Cupids are there from the shoemakers with 
the daintiest of bottines. Stockings, garters, 
and even less mentionable articles are not 
forgotten. Caskets, mirrors, twelve-buttoned 
gloves, scent bottles and handkerchiefs, hair- 
pins, and the gayest of parasols, has the God 
of Love piled into the arms of his messengers. 
Really a most practical, up-to-date God of 
Love, moving with the times ! One feels that 
the modern Temple of Love must be a sort 
of Swan and Edgar's ; the god himself a kind 
of celestial shop-walker ; while his mother, 
Venus, no doubt superintends the costume 
department. Quite an Olympian Whiteley, 
this latter-day Eros ; he has forgotten nothing, 
for at the back of the picture I notice one 
Cupid carrying a rather fat heart at the end 
of a string. 

You, Cinderella, could give good counsel to 
that sleeping child. You would say to her : 
" Awake from such dreams. The contents 
of a pawnbroker's store-room will not bring 
you happiness. Dream of love if you will ; 
that is a wise dream, even if it remains 
ever a dream. But these coloured beads, 
these Manchester goods ! are you then — 
you, heiress of all the ages — still at heart 



42 On the Disadvantage of not 

only as some poor savage maiden but little 
removed above the monkeys that share the 
primeval forest with her? Will you sell 
your gold to the first trader that brings you 
this barter ! These things, child, will only 
^jslltX^ your eyes for a few days. Do you 
think the Burlington Arcade is the gate of 
heaven ? " 

Ah, yes, I too could talk like that, — I, 
writer of books, to the young lad, sick of his 
office stool, dreaming of a literary career 
leading to fame and fortune. " And do you 
think, lad, that by that road you will reach 
Happiness sooner than by another ? Do 
you think interviews with yourself in penny 
weeklies will bring you any satisfaction after 
the first half-dozen ? Do you think the 
gushing female who has read all your books, 
and who wonders what it must feel like to 
be so clever, will be welcome to you the 
tenth time you meet her 't Do you think 
press cuttings will always consist of wonder- 
ing admiration of your genius, of paragraphs 
about your charming personal appearance 
under the head of ' Our Celebrities ' ? Have 
you thought of the ^^complimentary criti- 
cisms, of the spiteful paragraphs, of the ever- 



Getting what One Wants 43 

lasting fear of slipping a few inches down the 
greasy pole called ' popular taste,' to which 
you are condemned to cling for life, as sonie 
lesser criminal to his weary tread-mi I, 
struggling with no hope but not to fall ? 
Make a home, lad, for the woman who loves 
YOU • gather one or two friends about you ; 
work, think, and play, that will bring you 
happiness. Shun this roaring g'^f reread 
fair that calls itself, forsooth, the ' World of 
art and letters.' Let its clowns and its con- 
tortionists fight among themselves for the 
plaudits and the halfpence of the mob. Let 
it be with its shouting and its surging, its 
blare and its cheap flare. Come away; the 
summer's night is just the other side of the 
hedge, with its silence and its stars. 

You and I, Cinderella, are experienced 
people, and can therefore offer good advice, 
but do you think we should be listened to ? 

"Ah, no, my Prince is not as yours. 
Mine will love me always, and I am pecu- 
liarly fitted for the life of a palace. I have 
the instinct and the ability for it. I am sure 
I was made for a princess. Thank you, 
Cinderella, for your well-meant counsel, but 
there is much difl^-erence between you and 



me. 



44 O^^ ^^^ Disadvantage of not 

That is the answer you would receive, Cin- 
derella ; and my young friend would say to 
me ; " Yes, I can understand your finding 
disappointment in the literary career ; but 
then, you see, our cases are not quite similar. 
/ am not likely to find much trouble in 
keeping my position. / shall not fear reading 
what the critics say of me. No doubt there 
are disadvantages, when you are among the 
ruck, but there is always plenty of room at 
the top. So thank you, and good-bye." 

Besides, Cinderella dear, we should not 
quite mean it, — this excellent advice. We 
have grown accustomed to these gewgaws, 
and we should miss them in spite of our 
knowledge of their trashiness : you, your 
palace and your little gold crown ; I, my 
mountebank*s cap and the answering laugh 
that goes up from the crowd when I shake 
my bells. We want everything, — all the 
happiness that earth and heaven are capable 
of bestowing; creature comforts, and heart 
and soul comforts also ; and, proud-spirited 
beings that we are, we will not be put off 
with a part. Give us only everything, and 
we will be content. And, after all, Cinder- 
ella, you have had your day. Some little 



Getting what One Wants 45 

dogs never get theirs. You must not be 
greedy. You have known happiness. The 
palace was Paradise for those few months, 
and the Prince's arms were about you, 
Cinderella, the Prince's kisses on your Hps ; 
the gods themselves cannot take that from 
you. 

The cake cannot last for ever if we will 
eat of it so greedily. There must come the 
day when we have picked hungrily the last 
crumb ; when we sit staring at the empty 
board, nothing left of the feast, Cinderella, 
but the pain that comes of feasting. 

It is a na'i've confession, poor Human Na- 
ture has made to itself, in choosing, as it 
has, this story of Cinderella for its leading 
moral : Be good, little girl. Be meek under 
your many trials. Be gentle and kind, in 
spite of your hard lot, and one day — you 
shall marry a prince and ride in your own 
carriage. Be brave and true, little boy. 
Work hard and wait with patience, and in 
the end, with God's blessing, you shall earn 
riches enough to come back to London town 
and marry your master's daughter. 

You and I, gentle Reader, could teach 
these young folks a truer lesson, an we 



46 On the Disadvantage of not 

would. We know, alas ! that the road of all 
the virtues does not lead to wealth, rather 
the contrary ; else how explain our limited 
incomes ? But would it be well, think you, 
to tell them bluntly the truth ? — that honesty 
is the most expensive luxury a man can in- 
dulge in ; that virtue, if persisted in, leads, 
generally speaking, to a six-roomed house in 
an outlying suburb. Maybe the world is 
wise : the fiction has its uses. 

I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent 
young lady. She can read and write, knows 
her tables up to six times, and can argue. 
I regard her as representative of average 
Humanity in its attitude towards Fate ; and 
this is a dialogue I lately overheard between 
her and an elder lady who is good enough to 
occasionally impart to her the wisdom of the 
world: — 

" I Ve been good this morning, have n't 
I?" 

" Yes ; oh, yes, fairly good, for you." 

" You think papa will take me to the cir- 
cus to-night ? " 

"Yes, if you keep good. If you don't 
get naughty this afternoon." 

A pause. 



^ 



Getting what One Wants 47 

" I was good on Monday, you may re- 
member, nurse." 

" Tolerably good." 

" Very good, you said, nurse." 

" Well, yes, you were n t bad." 

" And I was to have gone to the panto- 
mime, and I did n't." 

" Well, that was because your aunt came 
up suddenly, and your papa could nt get 
another seat. Poor auntie wouldn't have 
gone at all if she had n t gone then." 

" Oh, would n t she ? " 

" No." 

Another pause. 

" Do you think she '11 come up suddenly 
to-day ? " 

" Oh, no, I don't think so." 

" No, I hope she does n't. I want to go to 
the circus to-night. Because, you see, nurse, 
if I don't it will discourage me." 

So perhaps the world is wise in promis- 
ing us the circus. We believe her at first. 
But after a while, I fear, we grow discouraged. 



ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT 

ATTACHING TO THE THINGS 

WE MEANT TO DO 



1CAN remember — but then I can re- 
member a long time ago. You, gentle 
Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, 
that age by thoughtless youth called middle, 
I cannot, of course, expect to follow me — 
when there was in great demand a certain 
periodical ycleped The Amateur, Its aim 
was noble. It sought to teach the beautiful 
lesson of independence, to inculcate the ^no, 
doctrine of self-help. One chapter explained 
to a man how he might make flower-pots out 
of Australian meat-cans ; another how he 
might turn butter-tubs into music-stools ; 
a third how he might utilise old bonnet- 
boxes for Venetian blinds : that was the prin- 
ciple of the whole scheme, — you made every- 
thing from something not intended for it, 
and as ill suited to the purpose as possible. 



Things we Meant to Do 49 

Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were 
devoted to the encouragement of the manu- 
facture of umbrella-stands out of old gas-pip- 
ing. Anything less adapted to the receipt 
of hats and umbrellas than gas-piping I can- 
not myself conceive ; had there been, I feel 
sure the author would have thought of it, 
and would have recommended it. 

Picture-frames you fashioned out of gin- 
ger-beer corks. You saved your ginger-beer 
corks, you found a picture — and the thing 
was complete. How much ginger-beer it 
would be necessary to drink, preparatory to 
the making of each frame, and the effect of 
it upon the frame-maker's physical, mental, 
and moral well-being, did not concern The 
Amateur, I calculate that for a fair-sized 
picture sixteen dozen bottles might suffice. 
Whether, after sixteen dozen of ginger-beer, 
a man would take any interest in framing a 
picture — whether he would retain any pride 
in the picture itself — is doubtful. But this 
of course was not the point. 

One young gentleman of my acquaintance 

— the son of the gardener of my sister, as 

friend Ollendorff would have described him — 

did succeed in getting through sufficient gin- 

4 



50 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

ger-beer to frame his grandfather, but the 
result was not encouraging. Indeed, the 
gardener^s wife herself was but ill satisfied. 

" What 's all them corks round father ? " 
was her first question. 

" Can*t you see ^ " was the somewhat indig- 
nant reply ; " that 's the frame.'* 

" Oh ! but why corks .? " 

" Well, the book said corks." 

Still the old lady remained unimpressed. 

" Somehow it don't look like father now," 
she sighed. 

Her eldest-born grew irritable : none of 
us appreciate criticism ! 

"What does it look like, then.?" he 
growled. 

"Well, I dunno. Seems to me to look 
like nothing but corks." 

The old lady's view was correct. Certain 
schools of art possibly lend themselves to 
this method of framing. I myself have 
seen a funeral card improved by it ; but, 
generally speaking, the consequence was a 
predominance of frame at the expense of 
the thing framed. The more honest and 
tasteful of the frame-makers would admit 
as much themselves. 



to Things we Meant to Do 5 i 

"Yes, it is ugly when you look at it," 
said one to me, as we stood surveying it 
from the centre of the room. " But what 
one feels about it is that one has done it 
oneself" 

Which reflection, I have noticed, recon- 
ciles us to many other things beside cork 
frames. 

Another young gentleman friend of mine 

— for I am bound to admit it was youth 
that profited most by the advice and coun- 
sel of The Amateur : I suppose as one gets 
older one gets less daring, less industrious 

— made a rocking-chair, according to the 
instructions of this book, out of a couple 
of beer barrels. From every practical point 
of view it was a bad rocking-chair. It 
rocked too much, and it rocked in too 
many directions at one and the same time. 
I take it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair 
does not want to be continually rocking. 
There comes a time when he says to him- 
self, "Now I have rocked sufficiently for 
the present ; now I will sit still for a while, 
lest a worse thing befall me." But this was 
one of those headstrong rocking-chairs that 
are a danger to humanity and a nuisance 



52 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

to themselves. Its notion was that it was 
made to rock, and that when it was not rock- 
ing, it was wasting its time. Once started, 
nothing could stop it, nothing ever did stop 
it, until it found itself topsy-turvy on its 
own occupant. That was the only thing 
that ever sobered it. 

I had called, and had been shown into 
the empty drawing-room. The rocking- 
chair nodded invitingly at me. I never 
guessed it was an amateur rocking-chair. 
I was young in those days, with faith in 
human nature, and I imagined that what- 
ever else a man might attempt without 
knowledge or experience, no one would be 
fool enough to experiment upon a rocking- 
chair. 

I threw myself into it lightly and care- 
lessly. I immediately noticed the ceiling. 
I made an instinctive movement forward. 
The window and a momentary glimpse of 
the wooded hills beyond shot upwards and 
disappeared. The carpet flashed across my 
eyes, and I caught sight of my own boots 
vanishing beneath me at the rate of about 
two hundred miles an hour. I made a con- 
vulsive effort to recover them. I suppose 



to Things we Meant to Do 53 

I overdid it. I saw the whole of the room 
at once, — the four walls, the ceiling, and the 
floor at the same moment. It was a sort 
of vision. I saw the cottage piano upside 
down, and I again saw my own boots flash 
past me, this time over my head, soles^ up- 
permost. Never before had I been in a 
position where my own boots had seemed 
so all-pervading. The next moment I lost 
my boots, and stopped the carpet with my 
head just as it was rushing past me. At 
the same instant something hit me violently 
in the small of the back. Reason, when 
recovered, suggested that my assailant must 
be the rocking-chair. Investigation proved 
the surmise correct. Fortunately I was still 
alone, and in consequence was able, a few 
minutes later, to meet my hostess with calm 
and dignity. I said nothing about the 
rocking-chair. As a matter of fact, I was 
hoping to have the pleasure, before I went, 
of seeing some other guest arrive and sample 
it : I had purposely replaced it in the most 
prominent and convenient position. But 
though I felt capable of schooling myself 
to silence, I found myself unable to agree 
with my hostess when she called for my 



54 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

admiration of the thing. My recent ex- 
periences had too deeply embittered me. 

"Willie made it himself," explained the 
fond mother. " Don't you think it was 
very clever of him ? " 

" Oh, yes, it was clever," I replied. " I 
am willing to admit that." 

" He made it out of some old beer bar- 
rels," she continued ; she seemed proud 
of it. 

My resentment, though I tried to keep 
it under control, was mounting higher. 

" Oh ! did he ? " I said ; " I should have 
thought he might have found something 
better to do with them." 

" What ? " she asked. 

"Oh! well, many things," I retorted. 
" He might have filled them again with 
beer." 

My hostess looked at me astonished. 
I felt some reason for my tone was ex- 
pected. 

" You see," I explained, " it is not a well- 
made chair. These rockers are too short 
and they are too curved, and one of them, 
if you notice, is higher than the other and 
of a smaller radius ; the back is at too ob- 



to Things we Meant to Do 55 

tuse an angle. When it is occupied the 
centre of gravity becomes — " 

My hostess interrupted me. 

" You have been sitting on it," she said. 

" Not for long," I assured her. 

Her tone changed. She became apolo- 
getic. 

" I am so sorry," she said. " It looks all 
right." 

"It does," I agreed ; " that is where the 
dear lad's cleverness displays itself. Its 
appearance disarms suspicion. With judg- 
ment that chair might be made to serve a 
really useful purpose. There are mutual 
acquaintances of ours, — I mention no names, 
you will know them, — pompous, self-sat- 
isfied, superior persons, who would be 
improved by that chair. If I were Willie I 
should disguise the mechanism with some 
artistic drapery, bait the thing with a couple 
of exceptionally inviting cushions, and em- 
ploy it to inculcate modesty and diffidence. 
I defy any human being to get out of that 
chair feeling as important as when he got 
into it. What the dear boy has done has 
been to construct an automatic exponent of 
the transitory nature of human greatness. 



56 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

As a moral agency, that chair should prove 
a blessing in disguise." 

My hostess smiled feebly ; more, I fear, 
from politeness than genuine enjoyment 

" I think you are too severe," she said. 
" When you remember that the boy has 
never tried his hand at anything of the kind 
before, that he has no knowledge and no 
experience, it really is not so bad." 

Considering the matter from that point of 
view, I was bound to concur. I did not like 
to suggest to her that before entering upon 
a difficult task it would be better for young 
men to acquire knowledge and experience : 
that is so unpopular a theory. 

But the thing that The Amateur put in 
the front and foremost of its propaganda 
was the manufacture of household furniture 
out of egg-boxes. Why egg-boxes, I have 
never been able to understand, but egg- 
boxes, according to the prescription of The 
Amateur, formed the foundation of household 
existence. With a sufficient supply of egg- 
boxes, and what The Amateur termed a 
" natural deftness," no young couple need 
hesitate to face the furnishing problem. 
Three egg-boxes made a writing-table ; on 



to Things we Meant to Do 57 

another egg-box you sat to write ; your 
books were ranged in egg-boxes around you, 
— and there was your study, complete. 

For the dining-room two egg-boxes made 
an over-mantel ; four egg-boxes and a piece 
of looking-glass a sideboard ; while six egg- 
boxes, with some wadding and a yard or so 
of cretonne, constituted a so-called "cosy 
corner." About the " corner " there could 
be no possible doubt. You sat on a corner ; 
you leant against a corner ; whichever way 
you moved you struck a fresh corner. The 
" cosiness," however, I deny. Egg-boxes I 
admit can be made useful ; I am even pre- 
pared to imagine them ornamental ; but 
" cosy," no. I have sampled egg-boxes in 
many shapes. I speak of years ago, when 
the world and we were younger, when our 
fortune was the Future ; secure in which, we 
hesitated not to set up house upon incomes 
folks with lesser expectations might have 
deemed insufficient. Under such circum- 
stances, the sole alternative to the egg-box, 
or similar school of furniture, would have 
been the strictly classical, consisting of a 
doorway joined to architectural proportions. 

I have from Saturday to Monday, as 



58 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

honoured guest, hung my clothes in egg- 
boxes. I have sat on an egg-box at an egg- 
box to take my dish of tea. I have made 
love on egg-boxes — aye, and to feel again 
the blood running through my veins as then 
it ran, I would be content to sit only on egg- 
boxes till the time should come when I 
could be buried in an egg-box, with an egg- 
box reared above me as tombstone — I have 
spent many an evening on an egg-box ; I 
have gone to bed in egg-boxes. They have 
their points — I am intending no pun — 
but to claim for them cosiness would be but 
to deceive. 

How quaint they were, those home-made 
rooms ! They rise out of shadows and 
shape themselves again before my eyes. I 
see the knobly sofa ; the easy-chairs that 
might have been designed by the Grand In- 
quisitor himself; the dented settle that was 
a bed by night; the few blue plates pur- 
chased in the slums off Wardour Street ; 
the enamelled stool to which one always 
stuck ; the mirror framed in silk ; the two 
Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap 
engraving ; the piano-cloth embroidered in 
peacock^s feathers by Annie's sister ; the tea- 



to Things we Meant to Do 59 

cloth worked by Cousin Jenny. We dreamt, 
sitting on these egg-boxes, — for we were 
young ladies and gentlemen with artistic 
taste, — of the days when we would eat in 
Chippendale dining-rooms, sip our coffee 
in Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms, and be 
happy. Well, we have got on, some of us, 
since then, as Mr. Bumpus used to say; 
and I notice, when on visits, that some of us 
have contrived so that we do sit on Chip- 
pendale chairs, at Sheraton dining-tables, and 
are warmed from Adam's fireplaces ; but, 
ah, me, where are the dreams, the hopes, 
the enthusiasms that clung like the scent of 
a March morning about those gimcrack 
second floors? In the dust-bin, I fear, with 
the cretonne-covered egg-boxes and the 
penny fans. Fate is so terribly even- 
handed. As she gives she ever takes away. 
She flung us a few shiUings and hope, where 
now she doles us out pounds and fears. Why 
did not we know how happy we were, sitting 
crowned with sweet conceit upon our egg- 
box thrones ? 

Yes, Dick, you have climbed well. You 
edit a great newspaper. You spread abroad 
the message — well, the message that Sir 



6o Exceptional Merit Attaching 

Joseph Goldbug, your proprietor, instructs 
you to spread abroad. You teach mankind 
the lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes 
them to learn. They say he is to have a peer- 
age next year. I am sure he has earned it ; 
and perhaps there may be a knighthood for 
you, Dick. 

Tom, you are getting on now. You have 
abandoned those unsaleable allegories. What 
rich art patron cares to be told continually 
by his own walls that Midas had ass's ears ; 
that Lazarus sits ever at the gate. You 
paint portraits now, and everybody tells me 
you are the coming man. That " Impres- 
sion " of old Lady Jezebel was really won- 
derful. The woman looks quite handsome, 
and yet it is her ladyship. Your touch is 
truly marvellous. 

But into your success, Tom, Dick, old 
friend, do not there creep moments when you 
would that we could fish up those old egg- 
boxes from the past, refurnish with them the 
dingy rooms in Camden Town, and find 
again there our youth, our loves, and our 
beliefs ? 

An incident brought back to my mind, 
the other day, the thought of all these things. 



I 



to Things we Meant to Do 6i 

I called for the first time upon a man, an 
actor, who had asked me to come and see 
him in the little home where he lives with 
his old father. To my astonishment, — for 
the craze, I believe, has long since died out, 
— I found the house half furnished out of 
packing-cases, butter-tubs, and egg-boxes. 
My friend earns his twenty pounds a week, 
but it was the old father's hobby, so he ex- 
plained to me, the making of these mon- 
strosities ; and of them he was as proud as 
though they were specimen furniture out of 
the South Kensington Museum. 

He took me into the dining-room to show 
me the latest outrage, — a new bookcase. A 
greater disfigurement to the room, which 
was otherwise prettily furnished, could hardly 
be imagined. There was no need for him 
to assure me, as he did, that it had been 
made out of nothing but egg-boxes. One 
could see at a glance that it was made out of 
egg-boxes, and badly constructed egg-boxes 
at that, — egg-boxes that were a disgrace to 
the firm that had turned them out; egg- 
boxes not worthy the storage of " shop 'uns '' 
at eighteen the shilling. 

We went upstairs to my friend's bedroom. 



62 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

He opened the door as a man might open 
the door of a museum of gems. 

" The old boy," he said, as he stood with 
his hand upon the door-knob, " made 
everything you see here, — everything," 
and we entered. He drew my attention 
to the wardrobe. " Now I will hold it 
up," he said, " while you pull the door open ; 
I think the floor must be a bit uneven ; it 
wobbles if you are not careful." It wobbled 
notwithstanding, but by coaxing and humour- 
ing we succeeded without mishap. I was 
surprised to notice a very small supply of 
clothes within, although my friend is a 
dressy man. 

"You see," he explained, " I dare not use 
it more than I can help. I am a clumsy 
chap, and as likely as not. If I happened to 
be in a hurry, I 'd have the whole thing 
over : " which seemed probable. 

I asked him how he contrived. " I dress 
in the bath-room as a rule," he replied ; " I 
keep most of my things there. Of course 
the old boy does n*t know." 

He showed me a chest of drawers. One 
drawer stood half open. 

" I 'm bound to leave that drawer open," 



to Things we Meant to Do 63 

he said; "I keep the things I use in that. 
They don't shut quite easily, these drawers ; 
or rather, they shut all right, but then they 
won't open. It is the weather, I think. 
They will open and shut all right in the 
summer, I dare say." He is of a hopeful 
disposition. 

But the pride of the room was the wash- 
stand. 

" What do you think of this ? " cried he, 
enthusiastically, " real marble top." 

He did not expatiate further. In his ex- 
citement he had laid his hand upon the 
thing, with the natural result that it col- 
lapsed. More by accident than design, I 
caught the jug in my arms. I also caught 
the water it contained. The basin rolled on 
its edge, and little damage was done, except 
to me and the soap-box. 

I could not pump up much admiration 
for this washstand ; I was feeling too wet. 

"What do you do when you want to 
wash ? " I asked, as together we reset the 
trap. 

There fell upon him the manner of a con- 
spirator revealing secrets. He glanced 
guiltily round the room ; then, creeping on 



64 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

tiptoe, he opened a cupboard behind the 
bed. Within was a tin basin and a small 
can. 

" Don't tell the old boy," he said. " I 
keep these things here, and wash on the 
floor." 

That was the best thing I myself ever got 
out of egg-boxes, — that picture of a deceit- 
ful son stealthily washing himself upon the 
floor behind the bed, trembling at every 
footstep lest it might be the " old boy " 
coming to the door. 

One wonders whether the Ten Command- 
ments are so all-sufficient as we good folk 
deem them, — whether the eleventh is not 
worth the whole pack of them : " that ye 
love one another " with just a commonplace, 
human, practical love. Could not the other 
ten be comfortably stowed away into a cor- 
ner of that? One is inclined, in one's 
anarchic moments, to agree with Louis 
Stevenson/ that to be amiable and cheerful 
is a good religion for a workaday'^world. 
We are so busy not killing, not stealing, not 
coveting our neighbour's wife, we have not 
time to be even just to one another for the 
little we are together here. Need we be so 



to Things we Meant to Do 65 

cocksure that our present list of virtues and 
vices is the only possibly correct and com- 
plete one ? Is the kind, unselfish man nec- 
essarily a villain because he does not always 
succeed in suppressing his natural instincts ? 
Is the narrow-hearted, sour-souled man, in- 
capable of a generous thought or act, neces- 
sarily a saint because he has none ? Have 
we not — we unco' guid — arrived at a wrong 
method of estimating our frailer brothers and 
sisters ? We judge them, as critics judge 
books, not by the good that is in them, but 
by their faults. Poor King David ! What 
would the local Vigilance Society have had 
to say to him ? Noah, according to our plan, 
would be denounced from every teetotal 
platform in the country, and Ham would 
head the Local Vestry poll as a reward for 
having exposed him. And St. Peter ! weak, 
frail St. Peter, how lucky for him that his 
fellow-disciples and their Master were not as 
strict in their notions of virtue as are we 
to-day ! 

Have we not forgotten the meaning of the 

word "virtue"? Once it stood for the 

good that was in a man, irrespective of the 

evil that might lie there also, as tares among 

5 



66 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

the wheat. We have abolished virtue, and 
for it substituted virtues. Not the hero — 
he was too full of faults — but the blameless 
valet ; not the man who does any good, 
but the man who has not been found out in any- 
evil, is our modern ideal. The most virtu- 
ous thing in nature, according to this new 
theory, should be the oyster. He is always 
at home, and always sober. He is not noisy. 
He gives no trouble to the police. I cannot 
think of a single one of the Ten Command- 
ments that he ever breaks. He never en- 
joys himself, and he never, so long as he 
hves, gives a moment's pleasure to any other 
living thing. 

I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion 
on the subject of morality. 

" You never hear me," the oyster might 
say, " howling round camps and villages, 
making night hideous, frightening quiet folk 
out of their lives. Why don't you go to 
bed early, as I do ? I never prowl round 
the oyster-bed, fighting other gentlemen 
oysters, making love to lady oysters already 
married. I never kill antelopes or mission- 
aries. Why can't you live as I do on salt 
water and germs, or whatever it is that I do 



to Things we Meant to Do (^"j 

live on ! Why don't you try to be more 
like me ? " 

An oyster has no evil passions, therefore 
we say he is a virtuous fish. We never ask 
ourselves, " Has he any good passions ? " 
A lion's behaviour is often such as no 
just man could condone. Has he not his 
good points also ? 

Will the fat, sleeky, " virtuous " man be 
as welcome at the gate of heaven as he 
supposes ? 

" Well," St. Peter may say to him, open- 
ing the door a little way and looking him 
up and down, " what is it now ? " 

" It 's me," the virtuous man will reply, 
with an oily, self-satisfied smile ; " I should 
say, I — I Ve come." 

" Yes, I see you have come ; but what 
is your claim to admittance ? What have 
you done with your threescore years and 
X.^Xi ? " 

" Done ! " the virtuous man will answer ; 
" I have done nothing, I assure you." 

" Nothing ! " 

" Nothing ; that is my strong point ; that 
is why I am here. I have never done any 
wrong." 



68 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

"And what good have you done? " 

" What good ! " 

" Aye, what good ? Do not you even 
know the meaning of the word ? What 
human creature is the better for your having 
eaten and drunk and slept these years ? 
You have done no harm, — no harm to 
yourself Perhaps if you had you might 
have done some good with it ; the two are 
generally to be found together down below, 
I remember. What good have you done 
that you should enter here ? This is no 
mummy chamber; this is the place of men 
and women who have lived ; who have 
wrought good — and evil also, alas ! for the 
sinners who fight for the right, not the right- 
eous who run with their souls from the 

fight." 

It was not, however, to speak of these 
things that I remembered The Amateur and 
its lessons. My intention was but to lead up 
to the story of a certain small boy, who in 
the doing of tasks not required of him was 
exceedingly clever. I wish to tell you his 
story, because, as do most true tales, it 
possesses a moral; ai^ stories without a 
moral I deem to be but foolish literature. 



to Things we Meant to Do 69 

resembling roads that lead to nowhere, such 
as sick folk tramp for exercise. 

I have known this little boy to take an 
expensive eight-day clock to pieces and 
make of it a toy steamboat. True, it was 
not, when made, very much of a steamboat ; 
but taking into consideration all the difficul- 
ties — the inadaptability of eight-day clock 
machinery to steamboat requirements, the 
necessity of getting the work accomplished 
quickly, before conservatively-minded people 
with no enthusiasm for science could inter- 
fere — a good enough steamboat. With 
merely an ironing-board and a few dozen 
meat-skewers, he would — provided the 
ironing-board was not missed in time — turn 
out quite a practicable rabbit-hutch. He 
could make a gun out of an umbrella and a 
gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as a 
Martini- Henry, was at all events more 
deadly. With half the garden-hose, a 
copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a 
few Dresden china ornaments off the draw- 
ing-room mantel-piece, he would build a 
fountain for the garden. He could make 
book-shelves out of kitchen tables, and 
crossbows out of crinolines. He could 



70 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

dam you a stream so that all the water 
would flow over the croquet lawn. He 
knew how to make red paint and oxygen 
gas, together with many other such-like 
commodities handy to have about a house. 
Among other things he learned how to make 
fireworks, and after a few explosions of an 
unimportant character came to make them 
very well indeed. The boy who can play a 
good game of cricket is liked. The boy 
who can fight well is respected. The boy 
who can cheek a master is loved. But the 
boy who can make fireworks is revered 
above all others as a boy belonging to a 
superior order of beings. The fifth of 
November was at hand, and with the con- 
sent of an indulgent mother he determined 
to give to the world a proof of his powers. 
A large pafty of friends, relatives, and 
schoolmates was invited, and for a fortnight 
beforehand the scullery was converted into a 
manufactory for fireworks. The female 
servants went about in hourly terror of their 
lives, and the villa, did we judge exclusively 
by smell, one might have imagined had been 
taken over by Satan, his main premises being 
inconveniently crowded, as an annex. By the 



to Things we Meant to Do 71 

evening of the fourth all was in readiness, 
and samples were tested to make sure that 
no contretemps should occur the following 
night. All was found to be perfect. The 
rockets rushed heavenward and descended 
in stars, the Roman candles tossed their fiery- 
balls into the darkness, the Catherine wheels 
sparkled and whirled, the crackers cracked, 
and the squibs banged. That night he 
went to bed a proud and happy boy, and 
dreamed of fame. He stood surrounded 
by blazing fireworks, and the vast crowd 
cheered him. His relations, most of whom, 
he knew, regarded him as the coming idiot 
of the family, were there to witness his tri- 
umph ; so too was Dickey Bowles, who 
laughed at him because he could not throw 
straight. The girl at the bun-shop, she 
also was there, and saw that he was clever. 

The night of the festival arrived, and 
with it the guests. They sat, wrapped up 
in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door, 
— uncles, cousins, aunts, little boys and big 
boys, little girls and big girls, with, as the 
theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, 
some forty of them in all, and waited. 

But the fireworks did not go off. Why 



72 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

they did not go off I cannot explain ; no- 
body ever could explain. The laws of na- 
ture seemed to be suspended for that night 
only. The rockets fell down and died 
where they stood. No human agency 
seemed able to ignite the squibs. The 
crackers gave one bang and collapsed. The 
Roman candles might have been English 
rushlights. The Catherine wheels became 
mere revolving glow-worms. The fiery 
serpents could not collect among them the 
spirit of a tortoise. The set piece, a ship 
at sea, showed one mast and the captain, 
and then went out. One or two items did 
their duty, but this only served to render 
the foolishness of the whole more striking. 
The little girls giggled, the little boys chaffed, 
the aunts and cousins said it was beautiful, 
the uncles inquired if it was all over, and 
talked about supper and trains, the " vil- 
lagers and retainers " dispersed laughing, 
the indulgent mother said, " Never mind," 
and explained how well everything had gone 
off yesterday ; the clever little boy crept 
upstairs to his room, and blubbered his 
heart out in the dark. 

Hours later, when the crowd had forgot- 



to Things we Meant to Do 73 

ten him, he stole out again into the garden. 
He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, 
and wondered what could have caused the 
fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew from his 
pocket a box of matches, and, Hghting one, 
he held it to the seared end of a rocket he 
had tried in vain to light four hours ago. 
It smouldered for an instant, then shot with 
a swish into the air, and broke into a hun- 
dred points of fire. He tried another and 
another with the same result. He made a 
fresh attempt to fire the set piece. Point 
by point the whole picture — minus the 
captain and one mast — came out of the 
night, and stood revealed in all the majesty 
of flame. Its sparks fell upon the piled-up 
heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a 
little while before had obstinately refused to 
burn, and that, one after another, had been 
thrown aside as useless. Now with the 
night frost upon them, they leaped to light 
in one grand volcanic eruption. And in 
front of the gorgeous spectacle he stood 
with only one consolation, — his mother's 
hand in his. 

The whole thing was a mystery to him 
at the time, but, as he learned to know life 



74 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

better, he came to understand that it was 
only one example of a solid but inexplicable 
fact, ruling all human affairs, — your fireworks 
wont go off while the crowd is around. 

Our brilliant repartees do not occur to 
us till the door is closed upon us and we 
are alone in the street, or, as the French 
would say, are coming down the stairs. 
Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded so 
telling as we delivered it before the looking- 
glass, falls strangely flat amidst the clinking 
of the glasses. The passionate torrent of 
words we meant to pour into her ear be- 
comes a halting rigmarole, at which — small 
blame to her — she only laughs. 

I would, gentle Reader, you could hear 
the stories that I meant to tell you. You 
judge me, of course, by the stories of mine 
that you have read — by this sort of thing, 
perhaps ; but that is not just to me. The 
stories I have not told you, that I am going 
to tell you one day, I would that you judge 
me by those. They are so beautiful ; you 
will say so ; over them you will laugh and 
cry with me. 

They come into my brain unbidden, they 
clamour to be written, yet when I take my 



to Things we Meant to Do 75 

pen in hand they are gone. It is as though 
they were shy of publicity, as though they 
would say to me : " You alone, you shall 
read us, but you must not write us ; we are 
too real, too true. We are like the thoughts 
you cannot speak. Perhaps a little later, 
when you know more of life, then you shall 
tell us." 

Next to these in merit I would place, 
were I writing a critical essay on myself, 
the stories I have begun to write and that 
remain unfinished, why I cannot explain to 
myself They are good stories, most of 
them ; better far than the stories I have 
accomplished. Another time, perhaps, if 
you care to listen, I will tell you the begin- 
ning of one or two, and you shall judge. 
Strangely enough, for I have always re- 
garded myself as a practical, common-sensed 
man, so many of these still-born children 
of my mind I find, on looking through the 
cupboard where their thin bodies lie, are 
ghost stories. I suppose the hope of ghosts 
is with us all. The world grows somewhat 
interesting to us heirs of all the ages. Year 
by year, science with broom and duster tears 
down the moth-worn tapestry, forces the 



76 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

doors of the locked chambers, lets light into 
the secret stairways, cleans out the dun- 
geons, explores the hidden passage, — find- 
ing everywhere only dust. This echoing 
old castle, the world, so full of mystery in 
the days when we were children, is losing 
somewhat its charm for us as we grow older. 
The king sleeps no longer in the hollow of 
the hills. We have tunnelled through his 
mountain chamber. We have shivered his 
beard with our pick. We have driven the 
gods from Olympus. No wanderer through 
the moonlit groves now fears or hopes the 
sweet, death-giving gleam of Aphrodite's 
face. Thor's hammer echoes not among 
the peaks ; *t is but the thunder of the 
excursion train. We have swept the woods 
of the fairies. We have filtered the sea of 
its nymphs. Even the ghosts are leaving 
us, chased by the Psychical Research 
Society. 

Perhaps, of all the others, they are the 
least, however, to be regretted. They were 
dull old fellows, clanking their rusty chains 
and groaning and sighing. Let them go. 

And yet how interesting they might be, 
if only they would! The old gentleman in 



to Things we Meant to Do ^^^^ 

the coat of mail, who lived in King John's 
reign, who was murdered, so they say, on 
the outskirts of the very wood I can see 
from my window as I write — stabbed in 
the back, poor gentleman, as he was riding 
home, his body flung into the moat that to 
this day is called Tor's tomb. " Dry enough 
it is now, and the primroses love its steep 
banks ; but a gloomy enough place in those 
days, no doubt, with its twenty feet of stag- 
nant water. Why does he haunt the forest 
paths at night, as they tell me he does, 
frightening the children out of their wits, 
blanching the faces and stilling the laughter 
of the peasant lads and lasses, slouching 
home from the village dance ? Instead, why 
does he not come up here and talk to me ? 
He should have my easy-chair and welcome, 
would he only be cheerful and companion- 
able. What brave tales could he not tell 
me. He fought in the first Crusade, heard 
the clarion voice of Peter, met the great 
Godfrey face to face, stood, hand on sword- 
hilt, at Runnymede, perhaps. Better than 
a whole library of historical novels would an 
evening's chat be with such a ghost. What 
has he done with his eight hundred years of 



78 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

death ? Where has he been ? What has he 
seen ? Maybe he has visited Mars ; has 
spoken to the strange spirits who can live 
in the liquid fires of Jupiter. What has he 
learned of the great secret ? Has he found 
the truth ? or is he, even as I, a wanderer 
still seeking the unknown ? 

You, poor, pale grey nun, they tell me 
that of midnights one may see your white 
face peering from the ruined belfry window, 
hear the clash of sword and shield among 
the cedar-trees beneath. 

It was very sad, I quite understand, my 
dear lady. Your lovers both were killed, 
and you retired to a convent. Believe me, 
I am sincerely sorry for you, but why waste 
every night renewing the whole painful 
experience ? Would it not be better for- 
gotten ? Good Heavens, madam, suppose 
we living folk were to spend our lives wail- 
ing and wringing our hands because of the 
wrongs done to us when we were children ? 
It is all over now. Had he lived, and had 
you married him, you might not have been 
happy. I do not wish to say anything un- 
kind, but marriages founded upon the sin- 
cerest mutual love have sometimes turned 



to Things we Meant to Do 70 

out unfortunately, as you must surely 
know. 

Do take my advice. Talk the matter 
over with the young men themselves. Per- 
suade them to shake hands and be friends. 
Come in, all of you, out of the cold, and let 
us have some reasonable talk. 

Why seek you to trouble us, you poor 
pale ghosts ? Are we not your children .? 
Be our wise friends. Tell me, how loved 
the young men in your young days ? how 
answered the maidens? Has the world 
changed much, do you think ? Had you 
not new women even then ? — girls who hated 
the everlasting tapestry frame and spinning- 
wheel. Your father's servants, were they so 
much worse off than the freemen who live 
in our East-end slums and sew slippers for 
fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shil- 
lings a week ? Do you think Society much 
improved during the last thousand years? 
Is it worse? is it better? or is it, on the 
whole, about the same, save that we call 
things by other names ? Tell me, what 
have you learned ? 

Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, 
even for ghosts ? 



8o Exceptional Merit Attaching 

One has had a tiring day's shooting. One 
is looking forward to one's bed. As one 
opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh 
comes from behind the bed-curtains, and 
one groans inwardly, knowing what is in 
store for one : a two or three hours' talk 
with rowdy old Sir Lanval, — he of the 
lance. We know all his tales by heart, 
and he will shout them. Suppose our aunt, 
from whom we have expectations, and who 
sleeps in the next room, should wake and 
overhear ! They were fit and proper 
enough stories, no doubt, for the Round 
Table, but we feel sure our aunt would 
not appreciate them, — that story about 
Sir Agravain and the cooper's wife ! and he 
always will tell that story. 

Or imagine the maid entering after dinner 
to say, — 

" Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled 
lady." 

"What, again? " says your wife, looking 
up from her work. 

" Yes, ma'am ; shall I show her up into 
the bedroom ? " 

" You had better ask your master," is the 
reply. The tone is suggestive of an un- 



to Things we Meant to Do 8 1 

pleasant five minutes so soon as the girl 
shall have withdrawn ; but what are you to 

do? ^ , 

"Yes, yes, show her up," you say, and the 

girl goes out, closing the door. 

Your wife gathers her work together, and 



rises. 



" Where are you going ? " you ask. 

" To sleep with the children," is the frigid 

answer. 

" It will look so rude," you urge. " We 
must be civil to the poor thing ; and you see 
it really is her room, as one might say. She 
has always haunted it." 

" It is very curious," returns the wife of 
your bosom, still more icily, " that she never 
haunts it except when you are down here. 
Where she goes when you are in town I *m 
sure I don t know." 

This is unjust. You cannot restrain your 
indignation. 

"What nonsense you talk, Elizabeth ! ^^ 
you reply ; " I am only barely polite to her." 

" Some men have such curious notions of 
politeness," returns Elizabeth. " But pray 
do not let us quarrel. I am only anxious 
not to disturb you. Two are company, you 

6 



82 Exceptional Merit Attaching 

know. I don't choose to be the third, that 's 
all." With which she goes out. 

And the veiled lady is still waiting for you 
upstairs. You wonder how long she will stop, 
also what will happen after she is gone. 

I fear there is no room for you ghosts in 
this our world. You remember how they 
came to Hiawatha, — the ghosts of the de- 
parted loved ones. He had prayed to them 
that they would come back to him to comfort 
him, so one day they crept into his wigwam, 
sat in silence round his fireside, chilled the 
air for Hiawatha, froze the smiles of Laughing 
Water. 

There is no room for you, oh, you poor, 
pale ghosts, in this our world. Do not 
trouble us. Let us forget. You stout 
elderly matron, your thin locks turning grey, 
your eyes grown weak, your chin more ample, 
your voice harsh with much scolding and 
complaining, needful, alas ! to household 
management, I pray you leave me. I loved 
you while you lived. How sweet, how 
beautiful you were ! I see you now in your 
white frock among the apple-blossoms. But 
you are dead, and your ghost disturbs my 
dreams. I would it haunted me not. 



to Things we Meant to Do S^ 

You dull old fellow, looking out at me 
from the glass at which I shave, why do you 
haunt me ? You are the ghost of a bright 
lad I once knew well. He might have done 
much, had he lived. I always had faith in 
him. Why do you haunt me? I would 
rather think of him as I remember him. I 
never imagined he would make such a poor 
ghost. 



ON THE PREPARATION AND 

EMPLOYMENT OF LOVE 

PHILTRES 



OCCASIONALLY a friend will ask me 
some such question as this. Do you 
prefer dark women or fair ? Another will 
say, Do you like tall women or short ? A 
third, Do you think light-hearted women, or 
serious, the more agreeable company? I 
find myself in the position that, once upon 
a time, overtook a certain charming young 
lady of taste who was asked by an anxious 
parent, the years mounting, and the family 
expenditure not decreasing, which of the 
numerous and eligible young men, then pay- 
ing court to her, she liked the best. She 
replied, that was her difficulty. She could 
not make up her mind which she liked the 
best. They were all so nice. She could 
not possibly select one to the exclusion of 
all the others. What she would have liked 



Employment of Love Philtres 85 

would have been to marry the lot, but that, 
she presumed, was Impracticable. 

I feel I resemble that young lady, not so 
much, perhaps, in charm and beauty as in- 
decision of mind, when questions such as 
the above are put to me. It is as if one 
were asked one's favourite food. There are 
times when one fancies an egg with one's 
tea. On other occasions one dreams of a 
kipper. To-day one clamours for lobsters. 
To-morrow one feels one never wishes to 
see a lobster again ; one determines to settle 
down for a time to a diet of bread and 
milk and rice-pudding. Asked suddenly to 
say whether I preferred ices to soup, or beef- 
steaks to caviare, I should be nonplussed. 

I like tall women and short, dark women 
and fair, merry women and grave. 

Do not blame me, Ladies, the fault lies 
with you. Every right-thinking man is an 
universal lover ; how could it be otherwise ? 
You are so diverse, yet each so charming of 
your kind ; and a man's heart is large. You 
have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man's 
heart is : that is his trouble — sometimes 
yours. 

May I not admire the daring tulip, be- 



86 On the Preparation and 

cause I love also the modest lily? May I 
not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, be- 
cause the scent of the queenly rose is pre- 
cious to me ? 

" Certainly not," I hear the Rose reply. 
"If you can see anything in her, you shall 
have nothing to do with me/* 

" If you care for that bold creature," says 
the Lily, trembling, " you are not the man 
I took you for. Good-bye." 

" Go to your baby- faced Violet," cries the 
Tulip, with a toss of her haughty head. 
"You are just fitted for each other." 

And when I return to the Lily, she tells 
me that she cannot trust me. She has 
watched me with those others. She knows 
me for a gadabout. Her gentle face is full 
of pain. 

So I must live unloved merely because I 
love too much. 

My wonder is that young men ever marry. 
The difficulty of selection must be appalling. 
I walked the other evening in Hyde Park. 
The band of the Life Guards played heart- 
lifting music, and the vast crowd were bask- 
ing in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos 
the English toiler. I strolled among them. 



Employment of Love Philtres 87 

and my attention was chiefly drawn towards 
the women. The great majority of them 
were, I suppose, shop girls, milliners, and 
others belonging to the lower middle-class. 
They had put on their best frocks, their bon- 
niest hats, their newest gloves. They sat or 
walked in twos and threes, chattering and 
preening, as happy as young sparrows on a 
clothes line. And what a handsome crowd 
they made ! I have seen German crowds, I 
have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian 
crowds ; but nowhere do you find such a 
proportion of pretty women as among the 
English middle-class. Three women out of 
every four were worth looking at, every other 
woman was pretty, while every fourth, one 
might say without exaggeration, was beauti- 
ful. As I passed to and fro the idea occurred 
to me : suppose I were an unprejudiced 
young bachelor, free from predilection, look- 
ing for a wife ; and let me suppose — it is 
only a fancy — that all these girls were 
ready and willing to accept me. I have 
only to choose ! I grew bewildered. There 
were fair girls, to look at whom was fatal ; 
dark girls that set one's heart aflame ; girls 
with red gold hair and grave grey eyes, 



88 On the Preparation and 

whom one would follow to the confines of 
the universe ; baby-faced girls that one 
longed to love and cherish ; girls with noble 
faces, whom a man might worship ; laughing 
girlsj with whom one could dance through 
life gaily; serious girls, with whom life 
would be sweet and good ; domestic-looking 
girls — one felt such would make delightful 
wives ; they would cook and sew and make 
of home a pleasant, peaceful place. Then 
wicked-looking girls came by, at the stab of 
whose bold eyes all orthodox thoughts were 
put to a flight, whose laughter turned the 
world into a mad carnival ; girls one could 
mould ; girls from whom one could learn ; 
sad girls one wanted to comfort ; merry girls 
who would cheer one ; little girls, big girls, 
queenly girls, fairy-like girls. 

Suppose a young man had to select his 
wife in this fashion from some twenty or 
thirty thousand ; or that a girl were suddenly 
confronted with eighteen thousand eligible 
young bachelors, and told to take the one 
she wanted and be quick about it ? Neither 
boy nor girl would ever marry. Fate is 
kinder to us. She understands, and assists 
us. In the hall of a Paris hotel I once over- 



Employment of Love Philtres 89 

heard one lady asking another to recommend 
her a milHner's shop. 

" Go to the Maison Nouvelle/* advised 
the questioned lady with enthusiasm. " They 
have the largest selection there of any place 
in Paris." 

" I know they have," replied the first lady ; 
" that is just why I don't mean to go there. 
It confuses me. If I see six bonnets I can 
tell the one I want in five minutes. If I see 
six hundred I come away without any bonnet 
at all. Don't you know a little shop ? " 

Fate takes the young man or the young 
woman aside. 

" Come into this village, my dear," says 
Fate ; " into this bye-street of this salubrious 
suburb, into this social circle, into this church, 
into this chapel. Now, my dear boy, out of 
these seventeen young ladies, which will you 
have ? Out of these thirteen young men 
which would you like for your very own, my 
dear?" 

" No, miss, I am sorry, but I am not able 
to show you our upstairs department to-day, 
the lift is not working. But I am sure we 
shall be able to find something in this room 
to suit you. Just look round, my dear, 
perhaps you will see something." 



90 On the Preparation and 

" No, sir, I cannot show you the stock in 
the next room ; we never take that out except 
for our very special customers. We keep 
our most expensive goods in that room. 
(Draw that curtain, Miss Circumstance, 
please. I have told you of that before.) 
Now, sir, would n*t you like this one ? This 
colour is quite the rage this season ; we are 
getting rid of quite a lot of these." 

" No, sir ! Well, of course, it would not 
do for every one*s taste to be the same. 
Perhaps something dark would suit you bet- 
ter. Bring out those two brunettes. Miss 
Circumstance. Charming girls both of them, 
don't you think so, sir ? I should say the 
taller one for you, sir. Just one moment, 
sir, allow me. Now, what do you think of 
that, sir ? might have been made to fit you, 
I 'm sure. Tou prefer the shorter one. Cer- 
tainly, sir, no difference to us at all. Both 
are the same price. There's nothing like 
having one's own fancy, I always say. No, 
sir, I cannot put her aside for you ; we never 
do that. Indeed, there's rather a run on 
brunettes just at present. I had a gentle- 
man in only this morning, looking at this 
particular one, and he is going to call again 



Employment of Love Philtres 9 1 

to-night. Indeed, I am not at all sure — 
Oh, of course, sir, if you like to settle on 
this one now, that ends the matter. (Put 
those others away. Miss Circumstance, 
please, and mark this one sold.) I feel sure 
you *11 like her, sir, when you get her home. 
Thank you^ sir. Good-morning ! " 

" Now, miss, have you seen anything you 
fancy ? Tes^ miss, this is all we have at 
anything near your price. (Shut those other 
cupboards, Miss Circumstance ; never show 
more stock than you are obliged to ; it only 
confuses customers. How often am I to 
tell you that?) 2>j, miss, you are quite 
right, there is a slight blemish. They all 
have some slight flaw. The makers say 
they can't help it; it's in the material. 
It's not once in a season we get a perfect 
specimen ; and when we do ladies don't seem 
to care for it. Most of our customers pre- 
fer a little faultiness. They say it gives 
character. Now look at this, miss. This 
sort of thing wears very well, warm and 
quiet. Tou 'd like one with more colour in it ? 
Certainly. Miss Circumstance, reach me 
down the art patterns. No, miss, we don't 
guarantee any of them over the year, so 



92 On the Preparation and 

much depends on how you use them. Oh^ 
yes^ miss, they '11 stand a fair amount of 
wear. People do tell you the quieter pat- 
terns last longer ; but my experience is that 
one is much the same as another. There 's 
really no telling any of them until you come 
to try them. We never recommend one 
more than another. There 's a lot of chance 
about these goods, it 's in the nature of them. 
What I always say to ladies is : ' Please your- 
self, it's you who have got to wear it; and 
it's no good having an article you start by 
not liking. TeSy miss, it is pretty and it looks 
well against you : it does indeed. Thank 
you, miss. Put that one aside. Miss Cir- 
cumstance, please. See that it does n't get 
mixed up with the unsold stock." 

It is a useful philtre, the juice of that 
small western flower that Oberon drops 
upon our eyelids as we sleep. It solves 
all difficulties in a trice. Why, of course 
Helena is the fairer. Compare her with 
Hermia ! Compare the raven with the 
dove ! How could we ever have doubted 
for a moment ? Bottom is an angel ; Bottom 
is as wise as he is handsome. Oh, Oberon, 
we thank you for that drug. Matilda Jane 



Employment of Love Philtres 93 

is a goddess ; Matilda Jane is a queen ; no 
woman ever born of Eve was like Matilda 
Jane. The little pimple on her nose, her 
little, sweet, tip-tilted nose, — how beautiful 
it is ! Her bright eyes flash with temper 
now and then ; how piquant is a temper in a 
woman ! William is a dear old stupid ; how 
lovable stupid men can be ! especially when 
wise enough to love us. William does not 
shine in conversation ; how we hate a magpie 
of a man ! William's chin is what is called 
receding, just the sort of chin a beard looks 
well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for 
that drug ; rub it on our eyelids once again. 
Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep 
by us. 

Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking 
of? You have given the bottle to Puck. 
Take it away from him, quick. Lord help 
us all if that imp has the bottle ! Lord 
save us from Puck while we sleep ! 

Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your 
lotion as an eye-opener, rather than as an 
eye-closer ? You remember the story the 
storks told the children of the little girl 
who was a toad by day, only her sweet dark 
eyes being left to her. But at night, when 



94 On the Preparation and 

the Prince clasped her close to his breast, 
lo ! again she became the king's daughter, 
fairest and fondest of women. There be 
many royal ladies in Marshland, with bad 
complexion and thin straight hair, and the 
silly princes sneer and ride away to woo 
some kitchen wench decked out in queen's 
apparel. Lucky the prince upon whose 
eyelids Oberon has dropped the magic 
philtre. 

In the gallery of a minor Continental 
town I have forgotten, hangs a picture that 
lives with me. The painting I cannot re- 
call, whether good or bad ; artists must for- 
give me for remembering only the subject. 
It shows a man, crucified by the roadside. 
No martyr he. If ever a man deserved 
hanging it was this one. So much the artist 
has made clear. The face, even under its 
mask of agony, is an evil, treacherous face. 
A peasant girl clings to the cross ; she 
stands tiptoe upon a patient donkey, strain- 
ing her face upward for the half-dead man 
to stoop and kiss her lips. 

Thief, coward, blackguard, they are 
stamped upon his face, but under the face, 
under the evil outside ? Is there no remnant 



Employment of Love Philtres 95 

of manhood, — nothing tender, nothing true ? 
A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him : 
no evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love 
is bUnd — aye, to our faults. Heaven help 
us all ; Love's eyes would be sore indeed if 
it were not so. But for the good that is in 
us her eyes are keen. You, crucified black- 
guard, stand forth. A hundred witnesses 
have given their evidence against you. Are 
there none to give evidence for him ? A 
woman, great Judge, who loved him. Let 
her speak. 

But I am wandering far from Hyde Park 
and its show of girls. 

They passed and repassed me, laughing, 
smiling, talking. Their eyes were bright 
with merry thoughts ; their voices soft and 
musical. They were pleased, and they 
wanted to please. Some were married ; 
some had evidently reasonable expectations 
of being married ; the rest hoped to be. 
And we, myself, and some ten thousand 
other young men. I repeat it, — myself and 
some ten thousand other young men ; for 
who among us ever thinks of himself but 
as a young man ? It is the world that ages, 
not we. The children cease their playing 



96 On the Preparation and 

and grow grave, the lasses* eyes are dimmer. 
The hills are a little steeper, the milestones, 
surely, farther apart. The songs the young 
men sing are less merry than the songs we 
used to sing. The days have grown a little 
colder, the wind a little keener. The wine 
has lost its flavour somewhat; the new 
humour is not like the old. The other 
boys are becoming dull and prosy ; but we 
are not changed. It is the world that is 
growing old. Therefore I brave your 
thoughtless laughter, youthful Reader, and 
repeat that we, myself and some ten thou- 
sand other young men, walked among these 
sweet girls, and, using our boyish eyes, 
were fascinated, charmed, and captivated. 
How delightful to spend our lives with them, 
to do little services for them that would call 
up these bright smiles ! How pleasant to 
jest with them and hear their flute-like 
laughter, to console them and read their 
grateful eyes ! Really, life is a pleasant 
thing, and the idea of marriage undoubtedly 
originated in the brain of a kindly Provi- 
dence. 

We smiled back at them, and we made 
way for them ; we rose from our chairs with 



Employment of Love Philtres 97 

a polite " Allow me, miss," " Don't mention 
it ; I prefer standing." " It is a delightful 
evening, is it not ? " And perhaps — for 
what harm was there ? — we dropped into 
conversation with these chance fellow-pas- 
sengers upon the stream of life. There 
were those among us — bold daring spirits 
— who even went to the length of mild 
flirtation. Some of us knew some of them, 
and in such happy case there followed inter- 
change of pretty pleasantries. Your Eng- 
lish middle-class young man and woman 
are not adepts at the game of flirtation. I 
will confess that our methods were, perhaps, 
elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle 
noisy as the evening wore on. But we 
meant no evil ; we did but our best to en- 
joy ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make 
the too brief time pass gaily. 

And then my thoughts travelled to small 
homes in distant suburbs, and these bright 
lads and lasses round me came to look older 
and more careworn. But what of that ? Are 
not old faces sweet when looked at by old 
eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not 
care and toil but the parents of peace and 
joy? 



98 On the Preparation and 

But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of 
the faces were seared with sour and angry- 
looks, and the voices that rose round me 
sounded surly and captious. The pretty 
compliment and praise had changed to sneers 
and scoldings. The dimpled smile had 
wrinkled to a frown. There seemed so little 
desire to please, so great a determination not 
to be pleased. 

And the flirtations ! Ah me, they had 
forgotten how to flirt ! Oh, the pity of it ! 
All the jests were bitter, all the little services 
were given grudgingly. The air seemed to 
have grown chilly. A darkness had come 
over all things. 

And then I awoke to reality, and found I 
had been sitting in my chair longer than I 
had intended. The band-stand was empty, 
the sun had set ; I rose and made my way 
home through the scattered crowd. 

Nature is so callous. The Dame irritates 
one at times by her devotion to her one idea, 
the propagation of the species. 

" Multiply and be fruitful ; let my world 
be ever more and more peopled." 

For this she trains and fashions her young 
girls, models them with cunning hand, paints 



Employment of Love Philtres 99 

them with her wonderful red and white, 
crowns them with her glorious hair, teaches 
them to smile and laugh, trains their voices 
into music, sends them out into the world to 
captivate, to enslave us. 

" See how beautiful she is, my lad,'* says 
the cunning old woman. " Take her ; 
build your little nest with her in your pretty 
suburb ; work for her and live for her ; 
enable her to keep the little ones that I will 
send.'* 

And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis 
whispers, " Is he not a bonny lad ? See 
how he loves you, how devoted he is to you ! 
He will work for you and make you happy ; 
he will build your home for you. You will 
be the mother of his children." 

So we take each other by the hand, full of 
hope and love, and from that hour Mother 
Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles 
come ; let our voices grow harsh ; let the 
fire she lighted in our hearts die out ; let the 
foolish selfishness we both thought we had 
pu-^ behind us for ever creep back to us, 
bringing unkindness and indifference, angry 
thoughts and cruel words into our lives. 
What cares she ? She has caught us, and 



lOO On the Preparation and 

chained us to her work. She is our uni- 
versal mother-in-law. She has done the 
match-making ; for the rest, she leaves it 
to ourselves. We can love or we can fight ; 
it is all one to her, confound her. 

I wonder sometimes if good temper might 
not be taught. In business we use no harsh 
language, say no unkind things to one 
another. The shopkeeper, leaning across 
the counter, is all smiles and affability ; he 
might put up his shutters were he otherwise. 
The commercial gent, no doubt, thinks the 
ponderous shop-walker an ass, but refrains 
from telling him so. Hasty tempers are 
banished from the City. Can we not see 
that it is just as much to our interest 
to banish them from Tooting and Hamp- 
stead ? 

The young man who sat in the chair next 
to me, how carefully he wrapped the cloak 
round the shoulders of the little milliner 
beside him ! And when she said she was 
tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang 
from his chair to walk with her, though it 
was evident he was very comfortable where 
he was. And she ! She had laughed at his 
jokes ; they were not very clever jokes, they 



Employment of Love Philtres i o I 

were not very new. She had probably read 
them herself months before in her own par- 
ticular weekly journal. Yet the harmless 
humbug made him happy. I wonder if ten 
years hence she will laugh at such old hu- 
mour, if ten years hence he will take such 
clumsy pains to put her cape about her. 
Experience shakes her head, and is amused 
at my question. 

I would have evening classes for the 
teaching of temper to married couples, only 
I fear the institution would languish for lack 
of pupils. The husbands would recommend 
their wives to attend, generously offering to 
pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife 
would be indignant at the suggestion of good 
money being thus wasted. "No, John, 
dear," she would unselfishly reply, "you 
need the lessons more than I do. It would 
be a shame for me to take them away from 
you,'* and they would wrangle upon the sub- 
ject for the rest of the day. 

Oh ! the folly of it. We pack our hamper 
for life 's picnic with such pains. We spend 
so much, we work so hard. We make 
choice pies ; we cook prime joints ; we pre- 
pare so carefully the mayonnaise; we mix with 



I02 On the Preparation and 

loving hands the salad ; we cram the basket 
to the lid with every delicacy we can think of. 
Everything to make the picnic a success is 
there — except the salt. Ah ! woe is me, 
we forget the salt. We slave at our desks, 
in our workshops, to make a home for those 
we love ; we give up our pleasures, we give 
up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from 
morning till night, and we render the whole 
feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth of salt, 
— for want of a soup^on of amiability, for 
want of a handful of kindly words, a touch 
of caress, a pinch of courtesy. 

Who does not know that estimable house- 
wife who works from eight till twelve to keep 
the house in what she calls order ? She is 
so good a woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so 
conscientious, so irritating. Her rooms are 
so clean, her servants so well managed, her 
children so well dressed, her dinners so well 
cooked ; the whole house so uninviting. 
Everything about her is in apple-pie order, 
and everybody wretched. 

My good Madam, you polish your tables, 
you scour your kettles, but the most valuable 
piece of furniture in the whole house you are 
letting go to rack and ruin for want of a little 



Employment of Love Philtres 103 

pains. You will find it in your own room, 
my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror. 
It is getting shabby and dingy, old-looking 
before its time ; the polish is rubbed off it. 
Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm. 
Do you remember when he first brought it 
home, how proud he was of it ? Do you 
think you have used it well, knowing how he 
valued it ? A little less care of your pots and 
your pans. Madam, a little more of yourself 
were wiser. Polish yourself up. Madam ; 
you had a pretty wit once, a pleasant laugh, 
a conversation that was not confined ex- 
clusively to the short-comings of servants, 
the wrong-doings of tradesmen. My dear 
Madam, we do not live on spotless linen, 
and crumbless carpets. Hunt out that 
bundle of old letters you keep tied up in 
faded ribbon at the back of your bureau- 
drawer — a pity you don*t read them oftener. 
He did not enthuse about your cuffs and 
collars, gush over the neatness of your darn- 
ing. It was your tangled hair he raved about, 
your sunny smile (we have not seen it for 
some years. Madam, — the fault of the Cook 
and the Butcher, I presume), your little hands, 
your rosebud mouth, — it has lost its shape, 



I04 On the Preparation and 

Madam, of late. Try a little less scolding 
of Mary Ann, and practise a laugh once a 
day : you might get back the dainty curves. 
It would be worth trying. It was a pretty 
mouth once. 

Who invented that mischievous falsehood 
that the way to a man's heart was through 
his stomach ? How many a silly woman, tak- 
ing it for truth, has let love slip out of the 
parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen. 
Of course, if you were foolish enough to 
marry a pig, I suppose you must be content 
to devote your life to the preparation of 
hog's-wash. But are you sure that he is a 
pig? If by any chance he be not? — then. 
Madam, you are making a grievous mistake. 
My dear Lady, you are too modest. If I 
may say so without making you unduly con- 
ceited, even at the dinner-table itself, you 
are of much more importance than the mut- 
ton. Courage, Madam, be not afraid to tilt a 
lance even with your own cook. You can be 
more piquant than the sauced la Tar^are, more 
soothing surely than the melted butter. 
There was a time when he would not have 
known whether he was eating beef or pork 
with you the other side of the table. Whose 



Employment of Love Philtres 1 05 

fault is it ? Don*t think so poorly of us. 
We are not ascetics, neither are we all 
gourmets : most of us plain men, fond of our 
dinner, as a healthy man should be, but 
fonder still of our sweethearts and wives, 
let us hope. Try us. A moderately-cooked 
dinner — let us even say a not-too-well- 
cooked dinner, with you looking your best, 
laughing and talking gaily and cleverly, — as 
you can, you know, — makes a pleasanter 
meal for us, after the day's work is done, 
than that same dinner, cooked to perfection, 
with you silent, jaded, and anxious, your 
pretty hair untidy, your pretty face wrinkled 
with care concerning the sole, with anxiety 
regarding the omelette. 

My poor Martha, be not troubled about 
so many things. Tou are the one thing 
needful — if the bricks and mortar are to be 
a home. See to it that you are well served 
up, th^t you are done to perfection, that you 
are tender and satisfying, that you are worth 
sitting down to. We wanted a wife, a com- 
rade, a friend ; not a cook and a nurse on 
the cheap. 

But of what use is it to talk? the world 
will ever follow its own folly. When I 



io6 On the Preparation and 

think of all the good advice that I have given 
it, and of the small result achieved, I con- 
fess I grow discouraged. I was giving good 
advice to a lady only the other day. I was 
instructing her as to the proper treatment 
of aunts. She was sucking a lead-pencil, 
a thing I am always telling her not to 
do. She took it out of her mouth to 
speak. 

" I suppose you know how everybody 
ought to do everything,'' she said. 

There are times when it is necessary to 
sacrifice one's modesty to one's duty. 

"Of course I do," I replied. 

" And does mamma know how everybody 
ought to do everything ? " was the second 
question. 

My conviction on this point was by no 
means so strong, but for domestic reasons I 
again sacrificed myself to expediency. 

" Certainly," I answered ; " and take that 
pencil out of your mouth. I 've told you 
of that before. You '11 swallow it one day, 
and then you '11 get perichondritis and die." 

She appeared to be solving a problem. 

" All grown-up people seem to know every- 
thing," she summarised. 



Employment of Love Philtres 107 

There are times when I doubt if children 
areas simple as they look. If it be sheer 
stupidity that prompts them to make re- 
marks of this character, one should pity 
them, and seek to improve them. But if it 
be not stupidity ? well, then, one should still 
seek to improve them, but by a different 
method. 

The other morning I overheard the nurse 
talking to this particular specimen. The 
woman is a most worthy creature, and she 
was imparting to the child some really sound 
advice. She was in the middle of an unex- 
ceptional exhortation concerning the virtue 
of silence, when Dorothea interrupted her 
with — 

"Oh, do be quiet. Nurse. I never get 
a moment's peace from your chatter." 

Such an interruption discourages a woman 
who is trying to do her duty. 

Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy. 
Myself, I think that rhubarb should never 
be eaten before April, and then never 
with lemonade. Her mother read her a 
homily upon the subject of pain. It was 
impressed upon her that we must be patient, 
that we must put up with the trouble that 



io8 On the Preparation and 

God sends us. Dorothea would descend to 
details, as children will. 

" Must we put up with the cod-liver oil 
that God sends us ? " 

" Yes, decidedly." 

" And with the nurses that God sends us? " 

" Certainly ; and be thankful that you Ve 
got them ; some little girls have n't any nurse. 
And don't talk so much." 

On Friday I found the mother In tears. 

" What 's the matter ? " I asked. 

" Oh, nothing," was the answer ; " only 
Baby. She 's such a strange child. I can't 
make her out at all." 

" What has she been up to now ? '* 

" Oh, she will argue, you know." 

She has that faiUng. I don't know where 
she gets it from, but she 's got it. 

" Well ? " 

" Well, she made me cross ; and, to punish 
her, I told her she should n't take her doll's 
perambulator out with her." 

" Yes ? " 

" Well, she did n't say anything then, but 
so soon as I was outside the door, I heard 
her talking to herself — you know her way ? " 

" Yes ? " 



Employment of Love Philtres 1 09 

" She said — " 

"Yes, she said?" 

" She said, ' I must be patient. I must 
put up with the mother God has sent me. ' '' 

She lunches downstairs on Sundays. We 
have her with us once a week to give her 
the opportunity of studying manners and 
behaviour. Milson had dropped in, and we 
were discussing politics. I was interested, 
and, pushing my plate aside, leant forward 
with my elbows on the table. Dorothea has 
a habit of talking to herself in a high-pitched 
whisper capable of being heard above an 
Adelphi love scene. I heard her say — 

" I must sit up straight. I must n't sprawl 
with my elbows on the table. It is only 
common, vulgar people behave that way.'* 

I looked across at her ; she was sitting 
most correctly, and appeared to be contem- 
plating something a thousand miles away. 
We had all of us been lounging ! We sat 
up stiffly, and conversation flagged. 

Of course we made a joke of it after the 
child was gone. But somehow it didn't 
seem to be our joke. 

I wish I could recollect my childhood. I 
should so like to know if children are as 
stupid as they can look. 



ON THE DELIGHTS AND 
BENEFITS OF SLAVERY 



MY study window looks down upon 
Hyde Park, and often, to quote 
the familiar promise of each new magazine, 
it amuses and instructs me to watch from my 
tower the epitome of human life that passes 
to and fro beneath. At the opening of the 
gates, creeps in the woman of the streets. 
Her pitiful work for the time being is over. 
Shivering in the chill dawn, she passes to 
her brief rest. Poor slave ! lured to the 
galley's lowest deck, then chained there. 
Civilisation, tricked fool, they say has need 
of such. You serve as the dogs of Eastern 
towns. But at least, it seems to me, we 
need not spit on you. Home to your 
kennel ! Perchance, if the Gods be kind, 
they may send you dreams of a cleanly hearth, 
where you lie with a silver collar round your 
neck. 



Benefits of Slavery 1 1 1 

Next comes the labourer — the hewer of 
wood, the drawer of water — slouching wearily 
to his toil ; sleep clinging still about his 
leaden eyes, his pittance of food carried tied 
up in a dish-clout. The first stroke of the 
hour clangs from Big Ben. Haste thee, 
fellow slave, lest the overseer's whip, " Out, 
we will have no lie-a-beds here," descend 
upon thy patient back. 

Later, the artisan, with his bag of tools 
across his shoulder. He, too, listens fearfully 
to the chiming of the bells. For him also 
there hangs ready the whip. 

After him the shop boy and the shop girl, 
making love as they walk, not to waste time. 
And after these the slaves of the desk and 
of the warehouse, employers and employed, 
clerks and tradesmen, office boys and mer- 
chants. To your places, slaves of all ranks. 
Get you unto your burdens. 

Now, laughing and shouting as they run, 
the children, the sons and daughters of the 
slaves. Be industrious, little children, and 
learn your lessons, that when the time comes 
you may be ready to take from our hands 
the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the 
roaring loom. For we shall not be slaves 



1 1 2 On the Delights and 

for ever, little children. It is the good law 
of the land. So many years in the galleys, 
so many years in the fields ; then we can 
claim our freedom. Then we shall go, little 
children, back to the land of our birth. And 
you we must leave behind us to take up the 
tale of our work. So, off to your schools, 
little children, and learn to be good little 
slaves. 

Next, pompous and sleek, come the edu- 
cated slaves, — journalists, doctors, judges, 
and poets ; the attorney, the artist, the player, 
the priest. They likewise skurry across the 
Park, looking anxiously from time to time at 
their watches, lest they be late for their ap- 
pointments ; thinking of the rates and taxes 
to be earned, of the bonnets to be paid for, 
the bills to be met. The best scourged, per- 
haps, of all, these slaves. The cat reserved for 
them has fifty tails in place of merely two or 
three. Work, you higher middle-class slave, 
or you shall come down to the smoking of 
two-penny cigars ; harder yet, or you shall 
drink shilling claret ; harder, or you shall 
lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus ; 
your wife's frocks shall be of last year's 
fashion ; your trousers shall bag at the knees ; 



Benefits of Slavery 113 

from Kensington you shall be banished to 

Kilburn, if the tale of your bricks run short. 

Ohj a many-thonged whip is yours, my 

genteel brother. 

The slaves of fashion are the next to pass 

beneath me in review. They are dressed 

and curled with infinite pains. The liveried, 

pampered footmen these, kept more for show 

than use ; but their senseless tasks none the 

less labour to them. Here must they come 

every day, merry or sad. By this gravel 

path and no other must they walk ; these 

phrases shall they use when they speak to 

one another. For an hour must they go 

slowly up and down upon a bicycle from 

Hyde Park Corner to the Magazine and 

back. And these clothes they must wear; 

their gloves of this colour, their neckties of 

this pattern. In the afternoon they must 

return again, this time in a carriage, dressed 

in another livery, and for an hour they must 

pass slowly to and fro in fooHsh procession. 

For dinner they must don yet another livery, 

and after dinner they must stand about at 

dreary social functions till with weariness and 

boredom their heads feel dropping from their 

shoulders. 

8 



1 14 On the Delights and 

With the evening come the slaves back 
from their work : barristers, thinking out 
their eloquent appeals ; school-boys, conning 
their dog-eared grammars ; city men, planning 
their schemes ; the wearers of motley, cudg- 
elling their poor brains for fresh wit with 
which to please their master ; shop boys and 
shop girls, silent now, as together they plod 
homeward ; the artisan ; the labourer. Two 
or three hours you shall have to yourselves, 
slaves, to think and love and play, if you be 
not too tired to think, or love, or play. 
Then to your litter, that you may be ready 
for the morrow's task. 

The twilight deepens into dark ; there 
comes back the woman of the streets. As 
the shadows, she rounds the City's day. 
Work strikes its tent. Evil creeps from its 
peering place. 

So we labour, driven by the whip of neces- 
sity, an army of slaves. If we do not our 
work, the whip descends upon us ; only the 
pain we feel in our stomach instead of on 
our back. And because of that, we call our- 
selves free men. 

Some few among us bravely struggle to 
be really free ; they are our tramps and out- 



Benefits of Slavery 1 1 ^ 

casts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from 
them, for the wages of freedom in this world 
are vermin and starvation. We can live 
lives worth living only by placing the collar 
round our neck. 

There are times when one asks oneself. 
Why this endless labour .? Why this build- 
ing of houses, this cooking of food, this 
making of clothes ? Is the ant so much 
more to be envied than the grasshopper, be- 
cause she spends her life in grubbing and 
storing, and can spare no time for singing ? 
Why this complex instinct, driving us to a 
thousand labours to satisfy a thousand de- 
sires ? We have turned the world into a 
workshop to provide ourselves with toys. 
To purchase luxury we have sold our ease. 

O Children of Israel ! why were ye not 
content in your wilderness ? It seems to 
have been a pattern wilderness. For you, 
a simple wholesome food, ready cooked, was 
provided. You took no thought for rent 
and taxes ; you had no poor among you, — 
no poor-rate collectors. You suffered not 
from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that 
follow overfeeding ; an omer for every man 
was your portion, neither more nor less. You 



1 1 6 On the Delights and 

knew not you had a liver. Doctors wearied 
you not with their theories, their physics, 
and their bills. You were neither land- 
owners nor leaseholders, neither shareholders 
nor debenture holders. The weather and 
the market reports troubled you not. The 
lawyer was unknown to you ; you wanted 
no advice ; you had nought to quarrel about 
with your neighbour. No riches were yours 
for the moth and rust to damage. Your 
yearly income and expenditure you knew 
would balance to a fraction. Your wife and 
children were provided for. Your old age 
caused you no anxiety ; you knew you would 
always have enough to live upon in comfort. 
Your funeral, a simple and tasteful affair, 
would be furnished by the tribe. And yet, 
poor, foolish child, fresh from the Egyptian 
brickfield, you could not rest satisfied. You 
hungered for the flesh-pots, knowing well 
what flesh-pots entail : the cleaning of the 
flesh-pots, the forging of the flesh-pots, the 
hewing of wood to make the fires for the 
boiling of the flesh-pots, the breeding of 
beasts to fill the pots, the growing of fodder 
to feed the beasts to fill the pots. 

All the labour of our life is centred round 



Benefits of Slavery 117 

our flesh-pots. On the altar of the flesh- 
pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of 
mind. For a mess of pottage we sell our 
birthright. 

O Children of Israel, saw you not the 
long punishment you were preparing for 
yourselves, when in your wilderness you 
set up the image of the Calf, and fell before 
it, crying, "This shall be our God.*' 

You would have veal. Thought you 
never of the price man pays for Veal ? The 
servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, 
stretched before my eyes, a weary endless 
throng. I see them toiling in the mines, 
the black sweat on their faces. I see them 
in sunless cities, silent and grimy and bent. 
I see them ague-twisted, in the rain-soaked 
fields. I see them panting by the furnace 
doors. I see them in loin-cloth and neck- 
lace, the load upon their head. I see them 
in blue coats and red coats, marching to pour 
their blood as an offering on the altar of the 
Calf I see them in homespun and broad- 
cloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I see 
them in cap and apron, theservantsof the Calf. 
They swarm on the land and they dot the sea. 
They are chained to the anvil and counter ; 



1 1 8 On the Delights and 

they are chained to the bench and the desk. 
They make ready the soil ; they till the fields 
where the Golden Calf is born. They build 
the ship, and they sail the ship that carries 
the Golden Calf. They fashion the pots, 
they mould the pans, they carve the tables, 
they turn the chairs, they dream of the 
sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave 
the damask, they mould the dish to serve 
the Golden Calf. 

The work of the world is to this end, that we 
eat of the Calf War and Commerce, Science 
and Law ! what are they but the four pillars 
supporting the Golden Calf? He is our 
God. It is on his back that we have jour- 
neyed from the primeval forest, where our 
ancestors ate nuts and fruit. He is our God. 
His temple is in every street. His blue- 
robed priest stands ever at the door, calling 
to the people to worship. Hark ! his voice 
rises on the gas-tainted air : " Now 's your 
time ! Now 's your time ! Buy ! Buy ! ye 
people. Bring hither the sweat of your 
brow, the sweat of your brain, the ache of 
your heart, buy Veal with it. Bring me 
the best years of your life. Bring me 
your thoughts, your hopes, your loves ; ye 



Benefits of Slavery 119 

shall have Veal for them. Now 's your time ! 
Now 's your time ! Buy ! Buy ! " 

Children of Israel, was Veal, even 
with all its trimmings, quite worth the price ? 

And we ! what wisdom have we learned, 
during the centuries ? I talked with a rich 
man only the other evening. He calls him- 
self a Financier, whatever that may mean. 
He leaves his beautiful house, some twenty 
miles out of London, at a quarter to eight, 
summer and winter, after a hurried breakfast 
by himself, while his guests still sleep, and 
he gets back just in time to dress for an 
elaborate dinner he himself is too weary or 
too preoccupied to more than touch. If 
ever he is persuaded to give himself a holi- 
day it is for a fortnight in Ostend, when it 
is most crowded and uncomfortable. He 
takes his secretary with him, receives and 
despatches a hundred telegrams a day, and 
has a private telephone, through which he 
can speak direct to London, brought up 
into his bedroom. 

1 suppose the telephone is really a useful 
invention. Business men tell me they won- 
der how they contrived to conduct their 
affairs without it. My own wonder always 



I20 On the Delights and 

is, how any human being with the ordinary- 
passions of his race can conduct his business, 
or even himself, creditably, within a hundred 
yards of the invention. I can imagine Job, 
or Griselda, or Socrates liking to have a tele- 
phone about them as exercise. Socrates, in 
particular, would have made quite a reputa- 
tion for himself out of a three months' sub- 
scription to a telephone. Myself, I am, 
perhaps, too sensitive. 1 once lived for a 
month in an office with a telephone, if one 
could call it life. I was told that if I had 
stuck to the thing for two or three months 
longer, I should have got used to it. I know 
friends of mine, men once fearless and high- 
spirited, who now stand in front of their own 
telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, 
and never so much as answer it back. They 
tell me that at first they used to swear and 
shout at it as I did ; but now their spirit 
seems crushed. That is what happens : you 
either break the telephone, or the telephone 
breaks you. You want to see a man two 
streets off. You might put on your hat 
and be round at his office in five minutes. 
You are on the point of starting when the 
telephone catches your eye. You think you 



Benefits of Slavery 121 

will ring him up to make sure he is in. You 
commence by ringing up some half-dozen 
times before anybody takes any notice of you 
whatever. You are burning with indignation 
at this neglect, and have left the instrument 
to sit down and pen a stinging letter of com- 
plaint to the Company when the ring-back 
re-calls you. You seize the ear trumpets 
and shout : — 

" How is it that I can never get an answer 
when I ring ? Here have I been ringing 
for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty 
times." (This is a falsehood. You have 
rung only six times, and the " half-hour " is 
an absurd exaggeration ; but you feel the 
mere truth would not be worthy of the 
occasion.) " I think it disgraceful," you 
continue, " and I shall complain to the Com- 
pany. What is the use of my having a 
telephone if I can't get any answer when I 
ring? Here I pay a large sum for having 
this thing, and I can't get any notice taken. 
I Ve been ringing all the morning. Why 
is it ? " 

Then you wait for the answer. 

"What — what do you say ? I can't hear 
what you say." 



122 On the Delights and 

^ " I say I Ve been ringing here for over an 
hour, and I can't get any reply/' you call 
back. " I shall complain to the Company." 

" You want what ? Don't stand so near 
the tube. I can't hear what you say. What 
number? " 

" Bother the number ! I say why is it I 
don't get an answer when I ring ? " 

" Eight hundred and what ? " 

You can't argue any more after that. 
The machine would give way under the 
language you want to make use of. Half 
of what you feel would probably cause an 
explosion at some point where the wire was 
weak. Indeed, mere language of any kind 
would fall short of the requirements of the 
case. A hatchet and a gun are the only 
intermediaries through which you could con- 
vey your meaning by this time. So you give 
up all attempt to answer back, and meekly 
mention that you want to be put in com- 
munication with four-five-seven-six. 

" Four-nine-seven-six ? " says the girl. 

" No ; four-five-seven-six." 

" Did you say seven-six or six-seven ? " 

" Six-seven — no ! I mean seven-six : no 
— wait a minute. I don't know what I do 
mean now." 



Benefits of Slavery 123 

" Well, I wish you *d find out/' says the 
young lady, severely. " You are keeping me 
here all the morning." 

So you look up the number in the book 
again, and at last she tells you that you are in 
connection, and then, ramming the trumpet 
tight against your ear, you stand waiting. 

And if there is one thing more than 
another likely to make a man feel ridiculous 
it is standing on tiptoe in a corner, holding 
a machine to his head, and listening intently 
to nothing. Your back aches and your head 
aches ; your very hair aches. You hear the 
door open behind you and somebody enter 
the room. You can't turn your head. You 
swear at them, and hear the door close with 
a bang. It immediately occurs to you that 
in all probability it was Henrietta. She 
promised to call for you at half-past twelve : 
you were to take her to lunch. It was 
twelve o'clock when you were fool enough 
to mix yourself up with this infernal machine, 
and it probably is half-past twelve by now. 
Your past life rises before you, accompanied 
by dim memories of your grandmother. You 
are wondering how much longer you can 
bear the strain of this attitude, and whether. 



124 On the Delights and 

after all, you do really want to see the man in 
the next street but two, when the girl in the 
exchange-room calls up to know if you 're 
done. 

"Done!" you retort bitterly; "why, I 
have n't begun yet." 

" Well, be quick," she says, " because 
you 're wasting time." 

Thus admonished, you attack the thing 
again. ^^ Are you there?" you cry in tones 
that ought to move the heart of a Charity 
Commissioner ; and then, oh joy ! oh rap- 
ture ! you hear a faint human voice reply- 
ing,— 

" Yes ; what is it ? " 

" Oh ! Are you four-five-seven-six ? " 

"What?" 

"Are you four-five-seven-six, William- 
son?" 

" What ! who are you ? " 

" Eight-one-nine, Jones." 

" Bones ? " 

" No, Jones. Are you four-five-seven- 
six ? " 

" Yes ; what is it ? " 

" Is Mr. Williamson in ? " 

"Will I what — who are you?" 



Benefits of Slavery 125 

" Jones ! Is Mr. Williamson in ? " 

" Who ? " 

" Williamson. Will-i-am-son ! " 

" You 're the son of what ? I can't hear 
what you say." 

Then you gather yourself for one final 
effort, and succeed, by superhuman patience, 
in getting the fool to understand that you 
wish to know if Mr. Williamson is in, and 
he says, so it sounds to you, " Be in all the 
morning." 

So you snatch up your hat and run round. 

" Oh, I Ve come to see Mr. Williamson," 
you say. 

"Very sorry, sir," is the polite reply, 
"but he's out." 

" Out ? Why, you just now told me 
through the telephone that he 'd be in all 
the morning." 

" No, I said, he ' won't be in all the morn- 
ing.'" 

You go back to the ofHce, and sit down 
in front of that telephone and look at it. 
There it hangs, calm and imperturbable. 
Were it an ordinary instrument, that would 
be its last hour. You would go straight 
downstairs, get the coal-hammer and the 



126 On the Delights and 

kitchen-poker, and divide it into sufficient 
pieces to give a bit to every man in London. 
But you feel nervous of these electrical af- 
fairs, and there is a something about that 
telephone, with its black hole and curly 
wires, that cowers you. You have a notion 
that if you don't handle it properly some- 
thing may come and shock you, and then 
there will be an inquest, and bother of that 
sort, so you only curse it. 

That is what happens when you want to 
use the telephone from your end. But that 
is not the worst that the telephone can do. 
A sensible man, after a little experience, can 
learn to leave the thing alone. Your worst 
troubles are not of your own making. You 
are working against time ; you have given 
instructions not to be disturbed. Perhaps 
it is after lunch, and you are thinking with 
your eyes closed, so that your thoughts shall 
not be distracted by the objects about the 
room. In either case you are anxious not 
to leave your chair, when off goes that tele- 
phone bell and you spring from your chair, 
uncertain, for the moment, whether you have 
been shot or blown up with dynamite. It 
occurs to you in your weakness that if you 



Benefits of Slavery 1 2 7 

persist in taking no notice, they will get 
tired and leave you alone. But that is not 
their method. The bell rings violently at 
ten-second intervals. You have nothing to 
wrap your head up in. You think it will 
be better to get this business over and done 
with. You go to your fate and call back 
savagely, — 

" What is it ? What do you want ? " 

No answer, only a confused murmur, 
prominent out of which come the voices of 
two men swearing at one another. The lan- 
guage they are making use of is disgraceful. 
The telephone seems peculiarly adapted for 
the conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary 
language sounds indistinct through it ; but 
every word those two men are saying can be 
heard by all the telephone subscribers in 
London. 

It is useless attempting to listen till they 
have done. When they are exhausted, you 
apply to the tube again. No answer is ob- 
tainable. You get mad, and become sarcas- 
tic ; only being sarcastic when you are not 
sure that anybody is at the other end to hear 
you is unsatisfying. 

At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of 



128 On the Delights and 

saying, " Are you there ? " " Yes, I 'm 
here," " Well ? " the young lady at the Ex- 
change asks what you want. 

" I don*t want anything," you reply. 

" Then why do you keep talking ? " she 
retorts ; " you must n't play with the thing." 

This renders you speechless with indigna- 
tion for a while, upon recovering from which 
you explain that somebody rang you up. 

" TVho rang you up ? " she asks. 

" I don't know." 

" I wish you did," she observes. 

Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet 
up and return to your chair. The instant 
you are seated the bell clangs again ; and 
you fly up and demand to know what the 
thunder they want, and who the thunder 
they are. 

" Don't speak so loud ; we can't hear you. 
What do you want ? " is the answer. 

" I don't want anything. What do you 
want ? Why do you ring me up and then 
not answer me ? Do leave me alone if you 
can." 

" We can't get Hong Kongs at seventy- 
four." 

"Well, I don't care if you can't." 



Benefits of Slavery 1 29 

" Would you like Zulus ? " 

" What are you talking about ? " you 
reply ; " I don't know what you mean." 

" Would you like Zulus, — Zulus at 
seventy-three and a half? " 

" I would n't have 'em at six a penny. 
What are you talking about ? " 

" Hong Kongs — we can't get them at 
seventy- four. Oh, half-a-minute " (the half- 
a-minute passes). " Are you there ? " 

" Yes, but you are talking to the wrong 



man." 



" We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy- 
four and seven-eighths." 

" Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I 
tell you, you are talking to the wrong man. 
I 've told you once." 

" Once what ? " 

" Why, that I am the wrong man — I 
mean that you are talking to the wrong 
man." 

" Who are you ? " 

" Eight-one-nine, Jones." 

" Oh, are n't you one-nine-eight ? " 

" No." 

" Oh, good-bye." 

« Good-bye." 

9 



130 On the Delights and 

How can a man after that sit down and 
write pleasantly of the European crisis ? 
And, if it were needed, herein lies another 
indictment against the telephone. I was en- 
gaged in an argument, which if not in itself 
serious, was at least concerned with a serious 
enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of 
human riches ; and from that highly moral 
discussion have I been lured, by the acci- 
dental sight of the word " telephone," into 
the writing of matter which can have the 
effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of 
the New Humour into whose hands, for their 
sins, this book may come. Let me forget 
my transgression and return to my sermon, 
or rather to the sermon of my millionaire 
acquaintance. 

It was one day after dinner ; we sat to- 
gether in his magnificently furnished dining- 
room. We had lighted our cigars at the 
silver lamp. The butler had withdrawn. 

" These cigars we are smoking," my 
friend suddenly remarked, a propos appar- 
ently of nothing, " they cost me five shil- 
lings apiece, taking them by the thousand." 

" I can quite believe it," I answered ; 
" they are worth it." 



Benefits of Slavery 1 3 i 

" Yes, to you/' he replied almost savagely. 
" What do you usually pay for your cigars ? " 

We had known each other years ago. 
When I first met him his offices consisted 
of a back room up three flights of stairs in 
a dingy bye-street off the Strand, which has 
since disappeared. We occasionally dined 
together, in those days, at a restaurant in 
Great Portland Street, for one and nine. 
Our acquaintanceship was of sufficient 
standing to allow of such a question. 

" Threepence," I answered. " They work 
out at about twopence three farthings by the 
box." 

" Just so," he growled ; " and your two- 
penny-three-farthing weed gives you pre- 
cisely the same amount of satisfaction that 
this five-shilling cigar affiDrds me. That 
means four and ninepence farthing wasted 
every time I smoke. I pay my cook two 
hundred a year. I don't enjoy my dinner 
as much as when it cost me four shillings, 
including a quarter flask of Chianti. What 
is the difference, personally, to me whether 
I drive to my office in a carriage and pair, 
or in an omnibus ? I often do ride in a bus : 
it saves trouble. It is absurd wasting time 



132 On the Delights and 

looking for one*s coachman, when the con- 
ductor of an omnibus that passes one's door 
is hailing one a few yards off. Before I 
could afford even buses — when I used to 
walk every morning to the office from 
Hammersmith — I was healthier. It irri- 
tates me to think how hard I work for no 
earthly benefit to myself My money 
pleases a lot of people I don't care two 
straws about, and who are only my friends 
in the hope of making something out of 
me. If I could eat a hundred-guinea dinner 
myself every night, and enjoy it four hun- 
dred times as much as I used to enjoy a five- 
shilling dinner, there would be some sense 
in it. Why do I do it ? " 

I had never heard him talk like this 
before. In his excitement he rose from 
the table, and commenced pacing the 
room. 

" Why don't I invest my money in the 
two and a half per cents ? " he continued. 
" At the very worst I should be safe for 
five thousand a year. What, in the name 
of common sense, does a man want with 
more ? I am always saying to myself, I '11 
do it ; why don't I ? " 



Benefits of Slavery 1 3 3 

"Well, why not?" I echoed. 

" That 's what I want you to tell me," he 
returned. "You set up for understanding 
human nature ; it 's a mystery to me. In my 
place, you would do as I do ; you know 
that. If somebody left you a hundred 
thousand pounds to-morrow, you would 
start a newspaper, or build a theatre, — 
some damn-fool trick for getting rid of the 
money and giving yourself seventeen hours' 
anxiety a day ; you know you would." 

I hung my head in shame. I felt the 
justice of the accusation. It has always 
been my dream to run a newspaper and 
own a theatre. 

"If we worked only for what we could 
spend," he went on, " the City might put 
up its shutters to-morrow morning. What 
I want to get at the bottom of is this in- 
stinct that drives us to work apparently 
for work's own sake. What is this strange 
thing that gets upon our back and spurs 
us?" 

A servant entered at that moment with a 
cablegram from the manager of one of his 
Austrian mines, and he had to leave me for 
his study. But, walking home, I fell to 



134 ^^ ^^^ Delights and 

pondering on his words. JVhy this endless 
work ? Why each morning do we get up 
and wash and dress ourselves, to undress 
ourselves at night and go to bed again ? 
Why do we work merely to earn money to 
buy food ; and eat food so as to gain strength 
that we may work ? Why do we live, 
merely in the end to say good-bye to one 
another ? Why do we labour to bring 
children into the world that they may die 
and be buried ? 

Of what use our mad striving, our pas- 
sionate desire ? Will it matter to the ages 
whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack 
or the Tricolour floated over the battlements 
of Badajoz ? Yet we poured our blood into 
its ditches to decide the question. Will it 
matter, in the days when the glacial period 
shall have come again, to clothe the earth 
with silence, whose foot first trod the Pole ? 
Yet, generation after generation, we mile its 
roadway with our whitening bones. So very 
soon the worms come to us ; does it matter 
whether we love or hate ? Yet the hot 
blood rushes through our veins, we wear 
out heart and brain for shadowy hopes 
that ever fade as we press forward. 



Benefits of Slavery 135 

The flower struggles up from seed-pod, 
draws the sweet sap from the ground, folds 
its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love 
comes to it in a strange form, and it longs 
to mingle its pollen with the pollen of some 
other flower. So it puts forth its gay blos- 
soms, and the wandering insect bears the 
message from seed-pod to seed-pod. And 
the seasons pass, bringing with them the sun- 
shine and the rain, till the flower withers, 
never having known the real purpose for 
which it lived, thinking the garden was 
made for it, not it for the garden. The 
coral insect dreams in its small soul, which 
is possibly its small stomach, of home and 
food. So it works and strives deep down in 
the dark waters, never knowing of the con- 
tinents it is fashioning. 

But the question still remains : for what 
purpose is it all ? Science explains it to us. 
By ages of strife and effort we improve the 
race ; from ether, through the monkey, man 
is born. So, through the labour of the com- 
ing ages, he will free himself still further 
from the brute. Through sorrow and 
through struggle, by the sweat of brain 
and brow, he will lift himself towards the 
angels. He will come into his kingdom. 



136 On the Delights and 

But why the building ? Why the pass- 
ing of the countless ages ? Why should he 
not have been born the god he is to be, 
imbued at birth with all the capabilities his 
ancestors have died acquiring? Why the 
Pict and Hun that / may be ? Why /, that 
a descendant of my own, to whom I shall 
seem a savage, shall come after me ? Why, 
if the universe be ordered by a Creator to 
whom all things are possible, the protoplas- 
mic cell ? Why not the man that is to be ? 
Shall all the generations be so much human 
waste that he may live ? Am I but another 
layer of the soil preparing for him ? 

Or, if our future be in other spheres, then 
why the need of this planet ? Are we 
labouring at some work too vast for us to 
perceive ? Are our passions and desires 
mere whips and traces by the help of which 
we are driven ? Any theory seems more 
hopeful than the thought that all our eager, 
fretful lives are but the turning of a useless 
prison crank. Looking back the little dis- 
tance that our dim eyes can penetrate the 
past, what do we find ? Civilisations, built 
up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. 
Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved 



Benefits of Slavery 1 3 7 

to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the 
dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of 
fraternity, drowned in blood by a Napoleon. 
What is left to us but the hope that the 
work itself, not the result, is the real monu- 
ment ? Maybe we are as children, asking, 
" Of what use are these lessons ? What 
good will they ever be to us ? " But there 
comes a day when the lad understands why 
he learnt grammar and geography, when 
even dates have a meaning for him. But 
this is not until he has left school and gone 
out into the wider world. So, perhaps, 
when we are a little more grown up, we too 
may begin to understand the reason for our 
living. 



ON THE CARE AND MANAGE- 
MENT OF WOMEN 



1 TALKED to a woman once on the 
subject of honeymoons. I said, 
" Would you recommend a long honey- 
moon, or a Saturday to Monday some- 
where ? " A silence fell upon her. I 
gathered she was looking back rather than 
forward to her answer. 

" I would advise a long honeymoon," she 
replied at length, "the old-fashioned month." 

" Why," I persisted, " I thought the ten- 
dency of the age was to cut these things 
shorter and shorter." 

"It is the tendency of the age," she an- 
swered, " to seek escape from many things it 
would be wiser to face. I think myself that, 



Management of Women 139 

for good or evil, the sooner it is over, — the 
sooner both the man and the woman know, 
— the better." 

" The sooner what is over ? " I asked. 

If she had a fault, this woman, about 
which I am not sure, it was an inclination 
towards enigma. 

She crossed to the window and stood there, 
looking out. 

" Was there not a custom," she said, still 
gazing down into the wet, glistening street, 
" among one of the ancient peoples, I forget 
which, ordaining that when a man and woman, 
loving each other, or thinking that they 
loved, had been joined together, they should 
go down upon their wedding night to the 
temple ? And into the dark recesses of the 
temple, through many winding passages, 
the priest led them until they came to the 
great chamber where dwelt the Voice of their 
god. There the priest left them, clanging- 
to the massive door behind him, and there, 
alone in silence, they made their sacrifice ; 
and in the night the Voice spoke to them, 
showing them their future life, — whether 
they had chosen well ; whether their love 
would live or die. And in the morning the 



140 On the Care and 

priest returned and led them back into the 
day ; and they dwelt among their fellows. 
But no one was permitted to question them, 
nor they to answer should any do so. — 
Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century 
honeymoon at Brighton, Switzerland, or 
Ramsgate, as the choice or necessity may be, 
always seems to me merely another form of 
that night spent alone in the temple before 
the altar of that forgotten god. Our young 
men and women marry, and we kiss them 
and congratulate them, and standing on the 
doorstep throw rice and old slippers, and 
shout good wishes after them ; and he waves 
his gloved hand to us, and she flutters her 
little handkerchief from the carriage window ; 
and we watch their smiling faces and hear 
their laughter until the corner hides them 
from our view. Then we go about our own 
business, and a short time passes by ; and 
one day we meet them again, and their faces 
have grown older and graver ; and I always 
wonder what the Voice has told them during 
that little while that they have been absent 
from our sight. But of course it would not 
do to ask them. Nor would they answer 
truly if we did." 



Management of Women 141 

My friend laughed, and leaving the win- 
dow took her place beside the tea-things, 
and, other callers dropping in, we fell to talk 
of pictures, plays, and people. 

But I felt it would be unwise to act on 
her sole advice, much as I have always val- 
ued her opinion. 

A woman takes life too seriously. It is a 
serious affair to most of us, the Lord knows. 
That is why it is well not to take it more 
seriously than need be. 

Little Jack and little Jill fall down the 
hill, hurting their little knees and their little 
noses, spilling the hard-earned water. We 
are very .philosophical. 

" Oh, don't cry ! " we tell them ; " that is 
babyish. Little boys and little girls must 
learn to bear pain. Up you get, fill the 
pail again, and try once more." 

Little Jack and little Jill rub their dirty 
knuckles into their little eyes, looking rue- 
fully at their bloody little knees and trot 
back with the pail. We laugh at them, but 
not ill-naturedly. 

" Poor little souls," we say ; " how they 
did hullabaloo ! One might have thought 
they were half-killed. And it was only a 



142 On the Care and 

broken crown, after all. What a fuss chil- 
dren make ! " We bear with much stoicism 
the fall of little Jack and Httle Jill. 

But when we — grown-up Jack with 
moustache turning grey ; grown-up Jill 
with the first faint " crow's feet *' showing — 
when we tumble down the hill, and our pail 
is spilt, ye Heavens ! what a tragedy has 
happened ! Put out the stars, turn off the 
sun, suspend the laws of nature. Mr. Jack 
and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill, — what 
they were doing on the hill we will not in- 
quire, — have slipped over a stone, placed 
there surely by the evil powers of the uni- 
verse. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have 
bumped their silly heads. Mr. Jack and 
Mrs. Jill have hurt their little hearts, and 
stand marvelling that the world can go 
about its business in the face of such 
disaster. 

Don't take the matter quite so seri- 
ously. Jack and Jill. You have spilled 
your happiness ; you must toil up the hill 
again and refill the pail. Carry it more 
carefully next time. What were you doing ? 
Playing some fooFs trick, I 'IJ be bound. 

A laugh and a sigh, a kiss and good-bye. 



Management of Women 143 

is our life. Is it worth so much fretting ? 
It is a merry life on the whole. Courage, 
comrade. A campaign cannot be all drum 
and fife and stirrup-cup. The marching 
and the fighting must come into it some- 
where. There are pleasant bivouacs among 
the vineyards, merry nights around the camp- 
fires. White hands wave a welcome to us ; 
bright eyes dim at our going. Would you 
run from the battle-music ? What have 
you to complain of? Forward: the medal 
to some, the surgeon's knife to others ; to 
all of us, sooner or later, six foot of mother 
earth. What are you afraid of? Courage, 
comrade. 

There is a mean between basking through 
life with the smiling contentment of the 
alligator, and shivering through it with the 
aggressive sensibility of the Lama deter- 
mined to die at every cross word. To bear 
it as a man we must also feel it as a man. 
My philosophic friend, seek not to comfort 
a brother standing by the coffin of his child 
with the cheery suggestion that it will be all 
the same a hundred years hence, because, for 
one thing, the observation is not true : the 
man is changed for all eternity, — possibly 



144 ^^ ^^^ C3,VQ and 

for the better, but don't add that. A sol- 
dier with a bullet in his neck is never quite 
the man he was. But he can laugh and he 
can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse. 
Now and again, towards evening, when the 
weather is trying, the sickness -will come 
upon him. You will find him on a couch 
in a dark corner. 

" Hallo! old fellow, anything up? " 
" Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you 
know. I will be better in a little while." 

Shut the door of the dark room quietly. 
I should not stay even to sympathise with 
him if I were you. The men will be com- 
ing to screw the coffin down soon. I think 
he would like to be alone with it till then. 
Let us leave him. He will come back to 
the club later on in the season. For a while 
we may have to give him another ten points 
or so, but he will soon get back his old 
form. Now and again, when he meets the 
other fellows' boys shouting on the towing- 
path ; when Brown rushes up the drive, 
paper in hand, to tell him how that young 
scapegrace Jim has won his Cross ; when 
he is congratulating Jones's eldest on having 
passed with honours, — the old wound may 



Management of Women 145 

give him a nasty twinge. But the pain 
will pass away. He will laugh at our 
stories and tell us his own ; eat his dinner, 
play his rubber. It is only a wound. 

Tommy can never be ours ; Jenny does 
not love us. We cannot afford claret, so 
we shall have to drink beer. Well, what 
would you have us do ? Yes, let us curse 
Fate, by all means ; some one to curse is 
always useful. Let us cry and wring our 
hands — for how long ? The dinner-bell 
will ring soon, and the Smiths are conHng. 
We shall have to talk about the opera and 
the picture-galleries. Quick, where is the 
eau-de-Cologne? where are the curling 
tongs? Or would you we committed sui- 
cide ? Is it worth while ? Only a few 
more years, — perhaps to-morrow, by aid 
of a piece of orange peel or a broken chim- 
ney pot, — and Fate will save us all that 
trouble. 

Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day 
after day ? We are a broken-hearted little 
Jack — little Jill. We shall never smile 
again ; we shall pine away and die, and be 
buried in the spring. The world is sad, and 
life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh, dear J 
oh, dear ! we have hurt ourselves. 



10 



146 



On the Care and 



We whimper and whine at every pain. 
In old strong days men faced real dangers, 
real troubles, every hour ; they had no time 
to cry. Death and disaster stood ever at the 
door. Men were contemptuous of them. 
Now in each snug protected villa we set to 
work to make wounds out of scratches. 
Every headache becomes an agony, every 
heartache a tragedy. It took a murdered 
father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured 
mother, a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime 
Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet 
that a modern minor poet obtains from a 
chorus girl's frown, or a temporary slump 
on the Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gum- 
midge, we feel it more. The lighter and 
easier life gets, the more seriously we go out 
to meet it. The boatmen of Ulysses faced 
the thunder and the sunshine alike with 
frolic welcome. We modern sailors have 
grown more sensitive. The sunshine scorches 
us ; the rain chills us. We meet both with 
loud self-pity. 

Thinking these thoughts, I sought a 
second friend, — a man whose breezy com- 
mon-sense has often helped me, — and him 
likewise I questioned on this subject of 
honeymoons. 



Management of Women 147 

" My dear boy," he replied, " take my 
advice : if ever you get married, arrange it 
so that the honeymoon shall only last a 
week, and let it be a bustling week into the 
bargain. Take a Cook^s circular tour. Get 
married on the Saturday morning, cut the 
breakfast and all that foolishness, and catch 
the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris. 
Take her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday. 
Lunch at Fontainebleau. Dine at the 
Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin 
Rouge in the evening. Take the night 
train for Lucerne. Devote Monday and 
Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into 
Rome by Thursday morning, taking the 
Italian lakes en route. On Friday cross to 
Marseilles, and from there push along to 
Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at the 
tables. Start early Saturday morning for 
Spain, cross the Pyrenees on mules, and 
rest at Bordeaux on Sunday. Get back to 
Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good 
day for the opera), and on Tuesday evening 
you will be at home and glad to get there. 
Don*t give her time to criticise you until 
she has got used to you. No man will bear 
unprotected exposure to a young girl's eyes. 



148 On the Care and 

The honeymoon is the matrimonial micro- 
scope. Wobble it. Confuse it with many- 
objects. Cloud it with other interests. 
Don't sit still to be examined. Besides, 
remember that a man always appears at his 
best when active, and a woman at her worst. 
Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her : I don't 
care who she may be. Give her plenty of 
luggage to look after ; make her catch trains. 
Let her see the average husband sprawling 
comfortably over the railway cushions, while 
his wife has to sit bolt upright in the corner 
left to her. Let her hear how other men 
swear. Let her smell other men's tobacco. 
Hurry up, and get her accustomed quickly 
to the sight of mankind. Then she will be 
less surprised and shocked as she grows to 
know you. One of the best fellows I ever 
knew spoilt his married life beyond repair 
by a long quiet honeymoon. They went 
off for a month to a lonely cottage in some 
heaven-forsaken spot, where never a soul 
came near them, and never a thing happened 
but morning, afternoon, and night. There 
for thirty days she overhauled him. When 
he yawned — and he yawned pretty often, I 
guess, during that month — she thought of 



Management of Women 149 

the size of his mouth, and when he put his 
heels upon the fender she sat and brooded 
upon the shape of his feet. At meal-time, 
not feeling hungry herself, having nothing 
to do to make her hungry, she would oc- 
cupy herself with watching him eat ; and at 
night, not feeling sleepy for the same reason, 
she would lie awake and listen to his snoring. 
After the first day or two he grew tired of 
talking nonsense, and she of listening to it 
(it sounded nonsense now they could speak 
it aloud; they had fancied it poetry when 
they had had to whisper it) ; and having no 
other subject, as yet, of common interest, 
they would sit and stare in front of them in 
silence. One day some trifle irritated him 
and he swore. On a busy railway platform, 
or in a crowded hotel, she would have said, 
' Oh ! ' and they would both have laughed. 
From that echoing desert the silly words 
rose up in widening circles towards the sky, 
and that night she cried herself to sleep. 
Bustle them, my dear boy, bustle them. 
We all like each other better, the less we 
think about one another, and the honey- 
moon is an exceptionally critical time. 
Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her." 



150 On the Care and 

My very worst honeymoon experience 
took place in the South of England in eigh- 
teen hundred and — well, never mind the 
exact date, let us say a few years ago. I was 
a shy young man at that time. Many 
complain of my reserve to this day, but then 
some girls expect too much from a man. 
We all have our shortcomings. Even then, 
however, I was not so shy as she. We had 
to travel from Lyndhurst in the New Forest 
to Ventnor, an awkward bit of cross-country 
work in those days. 

" It 's so fortunate you are going too,** 
said her aunt to me on the Tuesday; 
" Minnie is always so nervous travelling 
alone. You will be able to look after her, 
and I sha'n't be anxious." 

I said it would be a pleasure, and at 
the time I honestly thought it. On the 
Wednesday I went down to the coach office 
and booked two places for Lymington, 
from where we took the steamer. I had 
not a suspicion of trouble. 

The booking-clerk was an elderly man. 
He said, — 

" I Ve got the box seat, and the end 
place on the back bench." 



Management of Women 1 5 i 

I said, " Oh, can't I have two together ? '* 

He was a kindly looking old fellow. He 
winked at me. I wondered all the way- 
home why he had winked at me. He 
said, — 

" I '11 manage it somehow." 

I said, " It 's very kind of you, I 'm 
sure. 

He laid his hand on my shoulder. He 
struck me as familiar, but well-intentioned. 
He said, — 

" We have all of us been there." 

I thought he was alluding to the Isle of 
Wight. I said, — 

"And this is the best time of the year 
for it, so I 'm told." It was early summer 
time. 

He said, "It's all right in summer, and 
it 's good enough in winter — while it lasts. 
You make the most of it, young 'un ; " and 
he slapped me on the back and laughed. 

He would have irritated me in another 
minute. I paid for the seats and left him. 

At half-past eight the next morning 
Minnie and I started for the coach-office. 
I call her Minnie, not with any wish to be 
impertinent, but because I have forgotten 



152 On the Care and 

her surname. It must be ten years since I 
last saw her. She was a pretty girl, too, 
with those brown eyes that always cloud 
before they laugh. Her aunt did not drive 
down with us as she had intended in conse- 
quence of a headache. She was good enough 
to say she felt every confidence in me. 

The old booking-clerk caught sight of us 
when we were about a quarter of a mile 
away, and drew to us the attention of the 
coachman, who communicated the fact of 
our approach to the gathered passengers. 
Everybody left off talking and waited for 
us. The boots seized his horn, and blew 
— one could hardly call it a blast ; it would 
be difficult to say what he blew. He put 
his heart into it, but not sufficient wind. I 
think his intention was to welcome us, but 
it suggested rather a feeble curse. We 
learnt subsequently that he was a beginner 
on the instrument. 

In some mysterious way the whole affair 
appeared to be our party. The booking- 
clerk bustled up and helped Minnie from 
the cart. I feared, for a moment, he was 
going to kiss her. The coachman grinned 
when I said good-morning to him. The 



Management of Women. 153 

passengers grinned, the boots grinned. Two 
chamber-maids and a waiter came out from 
the hotel, and they grinned. I drew Minnie 
aside and whispered to her. I said, — 

" There 's something funny about us. All 
these people are grinning." 

She walked round me, and I walked 
round her, but we could neither of us dis- 
cover anything amusing about the other. 
The booking-clerk said, — 

" It *s all right. I Ve got you young 
people two places just behind the box-seat. 
We *11 have to put five of you on that seat. 
You won't mind sitting a bit close, will 
you?" 

The booking-clerk winked at the coach- 
man, the coachman winked at the passengers, 
the passengers winked at one another, — 
those of them who could wink, — and every- 
body laughed. The two chamber-maids 
became hysterical, and had to cling to each 
other for support. With the exception of 
Minnie and myself, it seemed to be the 
merriest coach party ever assembled at 
Lyndhurst. 

We had taken our places, and I was still 
busy trying to fathom the joke, when a stout 



154 ^^ ^^^ C^VG and 

lady appeared on the scene and demanded 
to know her place. 

The clerk explained to her that it was in 
the middle behind the driver. 

" We 've had to put five of you in that 
seat," added the clerk. 

The stout lady looked at the seat. 

" Five of us can't squeeze into that," she 
said. 

Five of her certainly could not. Four 
ordinary-sized people with her would find it 
tight. 

"Very well, then,'* said the clerk, "you 
can have the end place on the back seat." 

" Nothing of the sort," said the stout 
lady. " I booked my seat on Monday, and 
you told me any of the front places were 
vacant." 

"77/ take the back place," I said; "I 
don't mind it." 

" You stop where you are, young 'un," 
said the clerk, firmly, " and don't be a fool. 
I '11 fix herr 

I objected to his language, but his tone 
was kindness itself. 

" Oh, let me have the back seat," said 
Minnie, rising, " I 'd so like it." 



Management of Women 155 

For answer the coachman put both his 
hands on her shoulders. He was a heavy 
man, and she sat down again. 

" Now then, mum," said the clerk, ad- 
dressing the stout lady, " are you going up 
there in the middle, or are you coming up 
here at the back ? " 

" But why not let one of them take the 
back seat ? " demanded the stout lady, 
pointing her reticule at Minnie and my- 
self; "they say they'd like it. Let them 
have it." 

The coachman rose and addressed his 
remarks generally. 

" Put her up at the back, or leave her 
behind," he directed. "Man and wife have 
never been separated on this coach since I 
started running it fifteen year ago, and they 
ain't going to be now." 

A general cheer greeted this sentiment. 
The stout lady, now regarded as a would-be 
blighter of love's young dream, was hustled 
into the back seat, the whip cracked, and 
away we rolled. 

So here was the explanation. We were 
in a honeymoon district in June, — the 
most popular month in the whole year for 



156 On the Care and 

marriage. Every two out of three couples 
found wandering about the New Forest in 
June are honeymoon couples; the third are 
going to be. When they travel anywhere 
it is to the Isle of Wight. We both had 
on new clothes. Our bags happened to 
be new. By some evil chance our very 
umbrellas were new. Our united ages were 
thirty-seven. The wonder would have 
been had we not been mistaken for a 
young married couple. 

A day of greater misery I have rarely 
passed. To Minnie, so her aunt informed 
me afterwards, the journey was the most 
terrible experience of her life, but then her 
experience up to that time had been limited. 
She was engaged, and devotedly attached, to 
a young clergyman ; I was madly in love 
with a somewhat plump girl named Cecilia, 
who lived with her mother at Hampstead. 
I am positive as to her living at Hampstead. 
I remember so distinctly my weekly walk 
down the hill from Church Row to the 
Swiss Cottage station. When walking down 
a steep hill all the weight of the body is 
forced into the toe of the boot ; and when 
the boot is two sizes too small for you, and 



Management of Women 157 

you have been living in it since the early 
afternoon, you remember a thing like that. 
But all my recollections of Cecilia are pain- 
ful, and it is needless to pursue them. 

Our coach-load was a homely party, and 
some of the jokes were broad, — harmless 
enough in themselves, had Minnie and I 
really been the married couple we were sup- 
posed to be, but even in that case unneces- 
sary. I can only hope that Minnie did not 
understand them. Anyhow, she looked as 
if she did n't. 

I forget where we stopped for lunch, but 
I remember that lamb and mint sauce was 
on the table, and that the circumstance af- 
forded the greatest delight to all the party^ 
with the exception of the stout lady, who 
was still indignant, Minnie, and myself. 
About my behaviour as a bridegroom opin- 
ion appeared to be divided. " He 's a bit 
stand-offish with her," I overheard one lady 
remark to her husband ; " I like to see 'em 
a bit kittenish myself" A young waitress, 
on the other hand, I am happy to say, 
showed more sense of natural reserve. 
" Well, I respect him for it," she was saying 
to the bar-maid, as we passed through the 



158 On the Care and 

hall ; "I'd just hate to be fuzzled over with 
everybody looking on." Nobody took the 
trouble to drop their voices for our benefit. 
We might have been a pair of prize love- 
birds on exhibition, the way we were openly 
discussed. By the majority we were clearly 
regarded as a sulky young couple who would 
not go through their tricks. 

I have often wondered since how a real 
married couple would have faced the situa- 
tion. Possibly, had we consented to give a 
short display of marital affection, "by de- 
sire," we might have been left in peace for 
the remainder of the journey. 

Our reputation preceded us on to the 
steamboat. Minnie begged and prayed me 
to let it be known we were not married. 
How I was to let it be known, except by 
requesting the captain to summon the whole 
ship's company on deck, and then making 
them a short speech, I could not think. 
Minnie said she could not bear it any 
longer, and retired to the ladies' cabin. She 
went off crying. Her trouble was attributed 
by crew and passengers to my coldness. 
One fool planted himself opposite me with 
his legs apart, and shook his head at me. 



Management of Women 159 

" Go down and comfort her," he began. 
" Take an old man's advice. Put your 
arms around her/* (He was one of those 
sentimental idiots.) " Tell her that you 
love her.*' 

I told him to go and hang himself with 
so much vigour that he all but fell over- 
board. He was saved by a poultry crate: 
I had no luck that day. 

At Ryde the guard, by superhuman 
effort, contrived to keep us a carriage to 
ourselves. I gave him a shilling, because I 
did not know what else to do. I would 
have made it half-a-sovereign if he had put 
eight other passengers in with us. At every 
station people came to the window to look 
in at us. 

I handed Minnie over to her father on 
Ventnor platform ; and I took the first 
train, the next morning, to London. I felt 
I did not want to see her again for a little 
while ; and I felt convinced she could do 
without a visit from me. Our next meeting 
took place the week before her marriage. 

" Where are you going to spend your 
honeymoon ? " I asked her ; " in the New 
Forest?" 



i6o On the Care and 

" No," she replied ; " nor in the Isle of 
Wight." 

To enjoy the humour of an incident one 
must be at some distance from it either in 
time or relationship. I remember watching 
an amusing scene in Whitefield Street, just 
off Tottenham Court Road, one winter's 
Saturday night. A woman — a rather re- 
spectable-looking woman, had her hat only 
been on straight — had just been shot out 
of a public-house. She was very dignified 
and very drunk. A policeman requested 
her to move on. She called him " Fellow," 
and demanded to know of him if he con- 
sidered that was the proper tone in which to 
address a lady. She threatened to report 
him to her cousin, the Lord Chancellor. 

" Yes ; this way to the Lord Chancellor," 
retorted the policeman. " You come along 
with me;" and he caught hold of her by 
the arm. 

She gave a lurch and nearly fell. To save 
her the man put his arm round her waist. 
She clasped him round the neck, and to- 
gether they spun round two or three times ; 
while at the very moment a piano-organ at 
the opposite corner struck up a waltz. 



Management of Women 1 6 1 

" Choose your partners, gentlemen, for 
the next dance," shouted a wag, and the 
crowd roared. 

I was laughing myself, for the situation 
was undeniably comical, the constable's ex- 
pression of disgust being quite Hogarthian, 
when the sight of a little girFs face beneath 
the gas-lamp stayed me. The child's look 
was so full of terror that I tried to comfort 
her. 

"It's only a drunken woman," I said; 
" he 's not going to hurt her." 

" Please, sir," was the answer, " it 's my 
mother." 

Our joke Is generally another's pain. 
The man who sits down on the tin-tack 
rarely joins in the laugh. 



ON THE MINDING OF OTHER 
PEOPLE'S BUSINESS 

? 

I WALKED one bright September morn- 
ing in the Strand. I love London best 
in the autumn. Then only can one see the 
gleam of its white pavements, the bold, un- 
broken outlines of its streets. I love the 
cool vistas one comes across of mornings in 
the parks, the soft twilights that linger in the 
empty bye-streets. In June the restaurant 
manager is off-hand with me ; I feel I am 
but in his way. In August he spreads for 
me the table by the window, pours out for 
me my wine with his own fat hands. I cannot 
doubt his regard for me : my foolish jealousies 
are stilled. Do I care for a drive after din- 
ner through the caressing night air, I can 
climb the omnibus stair without a preliminary 
fight upon the curb, can sit with easy con- 
science and unsquashed body, not feeling 



Other People's Business 163 

I have deprived some hot, tired woman of a 
seat. Do I desire the play, no harsh, for- 
bidding " House full " board repels me from 
the door. During her season, London, a 
harassed hostess, has no time for us, her 
intimates. Her rooms are overcrowded, her 
servants overworked, her dinners hurriedly 
cooked, her tone insincere. In the spring, 
to be truthful, the great lady condescends to 
be somewhat vulgar — noisy and ostentatious. 
Not till the guests are departed is she herself 
again, — the London that we, her children, 
love. 

Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen Lon- 
don ? — not the London of the waking day, 
coated with crawling life, as a blossom with 
blight, but the London of the morning, freed 
from her rags, the patient city clad in mists. 
Get you up with the dawn on Sunday in 
summer time. Wake none else, but creep 
down stealthily into the kitchen, and make 
your own breakfast. Be careful you stumble 
not over the cat. She will worm herself 
insidiously between your legs. It is her way ; 
she means it in friendship. Neither bark 
your shins against the coal-box. Why the 
kitchen coal-box has its fixed place in the 



164 On the Minding of 

direct line between the kitchen door and the 
gas-bracket I cannot say. I merely know it 
as an universal law ; and I would that you 
escaped that coal-box, lest the frame of mind 
I desire for you on this Sabbath morning be 
dissipated. 

A spoon to stir your tea I fear you must 
dispense with. Knives and forks you will 
discover in plenty ; blacking-brushes you 
will put your hand upon in every drawer ; of 
emery paper, did one require it, there are 
reams ; but it is a point with every house- 
keeper that the spoons be hidden in a different 
place each night. If anybody excepting her- 
self can find them in the morning, it is a slur 
upon her. No matter, a stick of firewood, 
sharpened at one end, makes an excellent 
substitute. - 

Your breakfast done, turn out the gas, 
remount the stairs quietly, open gently the 
front door and slip out. You will find your- 
self in an unknown land. A strange city 
has grown round you in the night. The 
sweet long streets lie silent in the sunlight. 
Not a living thing is to be seen save some 
lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast 
as you approach. From some tree there 



Other People's Business 165 

will sound perhaps a fretful chirp : but the 
London sparrow is no early riser ; he is 
but talking in his sleep. The slow tramp 
of an unseen policeman draws near or 
dies away. The clatter of your own foot- 
steps goes with you, troubling you. You 
find yourself trying to walk softly, as one 
does in echoing cathedrals. A voice is every- 
where about you whispering to you, " Hush." 
Is this million-breasted City, then, some 
tender Artemis, seeking to keep her babes 
asleep. " Hush, you careless wayfarer ; do 
not waken them. Walk lighter ; they are 
so tired, these myriad children of mine, 
sleeping in my thousand arms. They are 
overworked and overworried ; so many of 
them are sick, so many fretful, many of them, 
alas ! so full of naughtiness. But all of them 
so tired. Hush ! they worry me with their 
noise and riot when they are awake. They 
are so good now they are asleep. Walk 
lighter; let them rest." 

Where the ebbing tide flows softly through 
worn arches to the sea, you may hear the 
stone-faced City talking to the restless waters: 
" Why will you never stay with me ? Why 
come but to go ? " 



1 66 On the Minding of 

".I cannot say ; I do not understand. From 
the deep sea I come, but only as a bird loosed 
from a child's hand with a cord. When she 
calls I must return." 

" It is so with these children of mine. 
They come to me, I know not whence. I 
nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do 
not see plucks them back. And others take 
their places." 

Through the still air there passes a ripple 
of sound. The sleeping City stirs with a faint 
sigh. A distant milk-cart rattling by raises a 
thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a 
yoked army. Soon from every street there 
rises the soothing cry, " Mee'hilk — mee'hilk." 
London, like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, 
crying for its milk. These be the white- 
smocked nurses hastening with its morning 
nourishment. The early church bells ring. 
" You have had your milk, little London. 
Now come and say your prayers. Another 
week has just begun, baby London. God 
knows what will happen ; say your prayers." 

One by one the little creatures creep from 
behind the blinds into the streets. The 
brooding tenderness is vanished from the 
City's face. The fretful noises of the day 



Other People's Business 167 

have come again. Silence, her lover of the 
night, kisses her stone lips and steals away. 
And you, gentle Reader, return home, gar- 
landed with the self-sufficiency of the early 
riser. 

But it was of a certain week-day morning 
in the Strand that I was thinking. I was 
standing outside Gatti's Restaurant, where I 
had just breakfasted, hstening leisurely to an 
argument between an indignant lady passen- 
ger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an 
omnibus conductor. 

" For what d' ye want thin to paint Put- 
ney on ye'r bus, if ye don't go to Putney ? " 
said the lady. 

"We do go to Putney," said the con- 
ductor. 

" Thin why did ye put me out here ? " 
" I did n*t put you out ; yer got out." 
" Shure, did n't the gintleman in the corner 
tell me I was comin' further away from Put- 
ney ivery minit ? " 

" Wal, and so yer was." 
" Thin whoy did n't you tell me ? " 
" How was I to know yer wanted to go to 
Putney ? Yer sings out Putney, and I stops 
and in yer dumps." 



1 68 On the Minding of 

"And for what d'ye think I called out 
Putney, thin?" 

" 'Cause it 's my name, or rayther the bus's 
name ! This 'ere is a Putney." 

" How can it be a Putney whin it is n't 
goin' to Putney, ye gomerhawk ? " 

" Ain't you an Hirishwoman ? " retorted 
the conductor. "'Course yer are. But yer 
are n't always goin' to Ireland. We 're goin' 
to Putney in time, only we're a-going to 
Liverpool Street fust. 'Igherup, Jim." 

The bus moved on, and I was about to 
cross the road, when a man, muttering sav- 
agely to himself, walked into me. He would 
have swept past me had I not, recognising 

him, arrested him. It was my friend B , 

a busy editor of magazines and journals. It 
was some seconds before he appeared able to 
struggle out of his abstraction and remember 
himself " Halloo ! " he then said, " who 
would have thought of seeing you here ? " 

" To judge by the way you were walking," 
I replied, " one would imagine the Strand the 
last place in which you expected to see any- 
human being. Do you ever walk into a 
short-tempered, muscular man ? " 

" Did I walk into you ? " he asked, sur- 
prised. 



Other People's Business i6g 

" Well, not right in," I answered, " if we 
are to be literal. You walked on to me ; 
if I had not stopped you, I suppose you 
would have walked over me.'* 

"It is this confounded Christmas busi- 
ness," he explained. " It drives me off my 
head." 

" I have heard Christmas advanced as an 
excuse for many things," I replied, " but not 
early in September." 

" Oh, you know what I mean," he an- 
swered ; " we are in the middle of our Christ- 
mas number. I am working day and night 
upon it. By the bye," he added, " that puts 
me in mind. I am arranging a symposium, 
and I want you to join. * Should Christ- 
mas ' " — I interrupted him. 

" My dear fellow," I said, " I commenced 
my journalistic career when I was eighteen, 
and I have continued it at intervals ever since. 
I have written about Christmas from the sen- 
timental point of view ; I have analysed it 
from the philosophical point of view ; and I 
have scarified it from the sarcastic standpoint. 
I have treated Christmas humourously for the 
Comics, and sympathetically for the Provin- 
cial Weeklies. I have said all that is worth 



lyo On the Minding of 

saying on the subject of Christmas — maybe 
a trifle more. I have told the new-fashioned 
Christmas story — you know the sort of 
thing : your heroine tries to understand her- 
self, and, failing, runs off with the man who 
began as the hero ; your good woman turns 
out to be really bad when one comes to know 
her ; while the villain, the only decent person 
in the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence 
on his lips that looks as if it meant some- 
thing, but which you yourself would be sorry 
to have to explain. I have also written the 
old-fashioned Christmas story — you know 
that also : you begin with a good old-fash- 
ioned snowstorm ; you have a good old- 
fashioned squire, and he lives in a good 
old-fashioned Hall; you work in a good 
old-fashioned murder; and end up with a 
good old-fashioned Christmas dinner. I 
have gathered Christmas guests together 
round the crackling logs to tell ghost stories 
to each other on Christmas Eve, while with- 
out the wind howled, as it always does on 
these occasions, at its proper cue. I have 
sent children to Heaven on Christmas Eve 
— it must be quite a busy time for St. Peter, 
Christmas morning, so many good children 



Other People's Business 171 

die on Christmas Eve. It has always been 
a popular night with them. I have revivified 
dead lovers and brought them back well and 
jolly, just in time to sit down to the Christ- 
mas dinner. I am not ashamed of having 
done these things. At the time I thought 
them good. I once loved currant wine and 
girls with tously hair. One*s views change 
as one grows older. I have discussed Christ- 
mas as a religious festival. I have arraigned 
it as a social incubus. If there be any joke 
connected with Christmas that I have not 
already made I should be glad to hear it. I 
have trotted out the indigestion jokes till the 
sight of one of them gives me indigestion 
myself. I have ridiculed the family gather- 
ing. I have scoffed at the Christmas pres- 
ent. I have made witty use of paterfamilias 
and his bills. I have — " 

" Did I ever show you," I broke off to 
ask as we were crossing the Haymarket, 
" that little parody of mine on Poe*s poem 
of ' The Bells ' ? It begins — " He inter- 
rupted me in his turn — 

" Bills, bills, bills," he repeated. 

" You are quite right," I admitted. " I 
forgot I ever showed it to you." 



172 On the Minding of 

" You never did," he replied. 

" Then how do you know how it begins ? " 
I asked. 

" I don't know for certain," he admitted ; 
" but I get, on an average, sixty-five a-year 
submitted to me, and they all begin that 
way. I thought perhaps yours did also." 

" I don't see how else it could begin," I 
retorted. He had rather annoyed me. 
" Besides, it does n't matter how a poem 
begins. It is how it goes on that is the im- 
portant thing ; and, anyhow, I 'm not going 
to write you anything about Christmas. 
Ask me to make you a new joke about a 
plumber ; suggest my inventing something 
original and not too shocking for a child to 
say about heaven : propose my running you 
off a dog story that can be believed by a 
man of average determination, and we may 
come to terms. But on the subject of 
Christmas I am taking a rest." 

By this time we had reached Piccadilly 
Circus. 

" I don't blame you," he said, " if you are 
as sick of the subject as I am. So soon as 
these Christmas numbers are off my mind, 
and Christmas is over till next June at the 



Other People's Business 173 

office, I shall begin it at home. The house- 
keeping is gone up a pound a week already. 
I know what that means. The dear little 
woman is saving up to give me an expensive 
present that I don't want. I think the 
presents are the worst part of Christmas. 
Emma will give me a water-colour that she 
has painted herself. She always does. 
There would be no harm in that if she did 
not expect me to hang it in the drawing- 
room. Have you ever seen my cousin 
Emma's water-colours ? " he asked. 

" I think I have/' I replied. 

" There 's no thinking about it," he re- 
torted angrily. " They 're not the sort of 
water-colours you forget." 

He apostrophised the Circus generally. 

" Why do people do these things ? " he 
demanded. " Even an amateur artist must 
have some sense. Can't they see what is 
happening ? There 's that thing of hers 
hanging in the passage. I put it in the 
passage because there 's not much light in 
the passage. She 's labelled it Reverie. If 
she had called it Influenza I could have 
understood it. I asked her where she got 
the idea from, and she said she saw the sky 



174 On the Minding of 

like that one evening in Norfolk. Great 
Heavens ! then why did n't she shut her 
eyes, or go home and hide behind the bed- 
curtains ? If I had seen a sky like that in 
Norfolk, I should have taken the first train 
back to London. I suppose the poor girl 
can't help seeing these things, but why paint 
them ? " 

I said, " I suppose painting is a necessity 
to some natures." 

" But why give the things to me ? " he 
pleaded. 

I could offer him no adequate reason. 

" The idiotic presents that people give 
you ! " he continued. " I said I 'd like 
Tennyson's poems one year. They had 
worried me to know what I did want. I 
did n't want anything, really ; that was the 
only thing I could think of that I was n't 
dead sure I did n't want. Well, they clubbed 
together, four of them, and gave me Tenny- 
son in twelve volumes, illustrated with col- 
oured photographs. They meant kindly, 
of course. If you suggest a tobacco-pouch, 
they give you a blue velvet bag capable of 
holding about a pound, embroidered with 
flowers, life-size. The only way one could 



Other People's Business 175 

use it would be to put a strap to it and wear 
it as a satchel. Would you believe it, I 
have got a velvet smoking-jacket, orna- 
mented with forget-me-nots and butterflies 
in silk ; I 'm not joking. And they ask me 
why I never wear it. I '11 bring it down to 
the Club one of these nights and wake the 
place up a bit : it needs it." 

We had arrived by this at the steps of the 
Devonshire. 

" And I 'm just as bad," he went on, 
" when I give presents. I never give them 
what they want. I never hit upon anything 
that is of any use to anybody. If I give 
Jane a chinchilla tippet, you may be certain 
chinchilla is the most out-of-date fur that any 
woman could wear. ' Oh ! that is nice of 
you,' she says ; * now that is just the very 
thing I wanted. I will keep it by me till 
chinchilla comes in again.' I give the girls 
watch-chains when nobody is wearing watch- 
chains. When watch-chains are all the rage, 
I give them ear-rings, and they thank me 
and suggest my taking them to a fancy- 
dress ball, that being their only chance to 
wear the confounded things. I waste money 
on white gloves with black backs, to find 



176 On the Minding of 

that white gloves with black backs stamps a 
woman as suburban. I believe all the shop- 
keepers in London save their old stock to 
palm it off on me at Christmas time. And 
why does it always take half-a-dozen people 
to serve you with a pair of gloves, I 'd like 
to know ? Only last week Jane asked me to 
get her some gloves for that last Mansion 
House affair. I was feeling amiable, and I 
thought I would do the thing handsomely. 
I hate going into a draper^s shop ; every- 
body stares at a man as if he were forcing 
his way into the ladies* department of a 
Turkish bath. One of those marionette 
sort of men came up to me and said it was 
a fine morning. What the devil did I want 
to talk about the morning to him for ? I 
said I wanted some gloves. I described 
them to the best of my recollection. I said, 
' I want them four buttons, but they are not 
to be button-gloves ; the buttons are in the 
middle and they reach up to the elbow, if 
you know what I mean.' He bowed, and 
said he understood exactly what I meant, 
which was a damned sight more than I did. 
I told him I wanted three pair cream and 
three pair fawn-coloured, and the fawn-col- 



Other People's Business 177 

oured were to be swedes. He corrected 
me. He said I meant ' Suede.' I dare say- 
he was right, but the interruption put me 
off, and I had to begin over again. He 
listened attentively until I had finished. I 
guess I was about five minutes standing with 
him there close to the door. He said, ' Is 
that all you require, sir, this morning ? * I 
said it was. 

" * Thank you, sir,' he replied. ' This 
way, please, sir.' 

" He took me into another room, and there 
we met a man named Jansen, to whom he 
briefly introduced me as a gentleman who 
' desired gloves.' * Yes, sir,' said Mr. Jan- 
sen ; ' and what sort of gloves do you 
desire ? ' 

" I told him I wanted six pairs all together, 
— three suede, fawn-coloured, and three 
cream-coloured — kids. 

"He said, ^ Do you mean kid gloves, sir, 
or gloves for children ? ' " 

" He made me angry by that. I told him 
I was not in the habit of using slang. Nor 
am I when buying gloves. He said he was 
sorry. I explained to him about the but- 
tons, so far as I could understand it myself. 



178 On the Minding of 

and about the length. I asked him to see 
to it that the buttons were sewn on firmly, 
and that the stitching everywhere was per- 
fect, adding that the last gloves my wife had 
had of his firm had been most unsatisfactory. 
Jane had impressed upon me to add that. 
She said it would make them more careful. 

" He listened to me in rapt ecstasy. I 
might have been music. 

" ' And what size, sir ? * he asked. 

" I had forgotten that. ' Oh, sixes,* I 
answered, 'unless they are very stretchy in- 
deed, in which case they had better be five 
and three-quarter.' 

" ' Oh, and the stitching on the cream is 
to be black,* I added. That was another 
thing I had forgotten. 

" ' Thank you very much,* said Mr. 
Jansen ; 'is there anything else that you' 
require this morning ? * 

" ' No, thank you,* I replied, ' not this 
morning.* I was beginning to like the man. 

" He took me for quite a walk, and wher- 
ever we went everybody left off what they 
were doing to stare at me. I was getting 
tired when we reached the glove department. 
He marched me up to a young man who 



Other People's Business 179 

was sticking pins into himself. He said 
* Gloves/ and disappeared through a curtain. 
The young man left off sticking pins into 
himself, and leant across the counter. 

" ' Ladies* gloves or gentlemen*s gloves ? * 
he said. 

" Well, I was pretty mad by this time, as 
you can guess. It is funny when you come 
to think of it afterwards, but the wonder 
then was that I did n't punch his head. 

" I said, ' Are you ever busy in this shop ? 
Does there ever come a time when you feel 
you would like to get your work done, in- 
stead of lingering over it and spinning it out 
for pure love of the thing ? * 

" He did not appear to understand me. 
I said : ' I met a man at your door a quarter 
of an hour ago, and we talked about these 
gloves that I want, and I told him all my 
ideas on the subject. He took me to your 
Mr. Jansen, and Mr. Jansen and I went 
over the whole business again. Now Mr. 
Jansen leaves me with you, — you^ who do 
not even know whether I want ladies* or 
gentlemen's gloves. Before I go over this 
story for the third time, I want to know 
whether you are the man who is going to 



i8o On the Minding of 

serve me, or whether you are merely a lis- 
tener, because personally I am tired of the 
subject ? ' 

" Well, this was the right man at last, and 
I got my gloves from him. But what is the 
explanation ? What is the idea ? I was in 
that shop from first to last five-and-thirty 
minutes. And then a fool took me out the 
wrong way to show me a special line in 
sleeping-socks. I told him I was not re- 
quiring any. He said he did n't want me to 
buy, he only wanted me to see them. No 
wonder the drapers have had to start 
luncheon and tea rooms. They '11 fix up 
small furnished flats soon, where a woman 
can live for a week." 

I said it was very trying, shopping. I 
also said, as he invited me, and as he ap- 
peared determined to go on talking, that I 
would have a brandy-and-soda. We were 
in the smoke-room by this time. 

" There ought to be an association," he 
continued, " a kind of clearing-house for the 
collection and distribution of Christmas 
presents. One would give them a list of the 
people from whom to collect presents, and 
of the people to whom to send. Suppose 



Other People's Business i8i 

they collected on my account twenty Christ- 
mas presents, value, say, ten pounds, while 
on the other hand they sent out for me 
thirty presents at a cost of fifteen pounds. 
They would debit me with the balance of 
fivQ pounds, together with a small commis- 
sion. I should pay it cheerfully, and there 
would be no further trouble. Perhaps one 
might even make a profit. The idea might 
include birthdays and weddings. A firm 
would do the business thoroughly. They 
would see that all your friends paid up — I 
mean sent presents ; and they would not for- 
get to send to your most important relative. 
There is only one member of our family 
capable of leaving a shilling ; and of course 
if I forget to send to any one it is to him. 
When I remember him I generally make a 
muddle of the business. Two years ago I 
gave him a bath, — I don't mean I washed 
him, — an india-rubber thing, that he could 
pack in his portmanteau. I thought he 
would find it useful for travelling. Would 
you believe it, he took it as a personal af- 
front, and would n't speak to me for a month, 
the snuffy old idiot." 

" I suppose the children enjoy it," I said. 



i8 2 On the Minding of 

" Enjoy what ? " he asked. 

" Why, Christmas," I explained. 

" I don't believe they do," he snapped : 
" nobody enjoys it. We excite them for 
three weeks beforehand, telling them what a 
good time they are going to have, overfeed 
them for two or three days, take them to 
something they do not want to see, but 
which we do, and then bully them for a fort- 
night to get them back into their normal 
condition. I was always taken to the Crys- 
tal Palace and Madame Tussaud's when I 
was a child, I remember. How I did hate 
that Crystal Palace ! Aunt used to super- 
intend. It was always a bitterly cold day, 
and we always got into the wrong train, and 
travelled half the day before we got there. 
We never had any dinner. It never occurs 
to a woman that anybody can want their 
meals while away from home. She seems 
to think that nature is in suspense from 
the time you leave the house till the time 
you get back to it. A bun and a glass of 
milk was her idea of lunch for a school-boy. 
Half her time was taken up in losing us, 
and the other half in slapping us when she 
had found us. The only thing we really 



Other People's Business 183 

enjoyed was the row with the cabman com- 
ing home." 

I rose to go. 

" Then you won't join that symposium ? " 

said B . " It would be an easy enough 

thing to knock off, ^ Why Christmas should 
be abolished.* " 

" It sounds simple," I answered. " But 
how do you propose to abolish it ? " The 
lady editor of an "advanced" American maga- 
zine once set the discussion, " Should sex 
be abolished? " and eleven ladies and gentle- 
men seriously argued the question. 

" Leave it to die of inanition," said B ; 

" the first step is to arouse public opinion. 
Convince the public that it should be 
abolished." 

" But why should it be abolished ? " I 
asked. 

" Great Scott ! man," he exclaimed, " don't 
you want it abolished ? " 

" I 'm not sure that I do," I replied. 

" Not sure," he retorted ; " you call your- 
self a journalist, and admit there is a sub- 
ject under Heaven of which you are not 
sure ! " 

" It has come over me of late years," I re- 



184 On the Minding of 

plied. " It used not to be my failing, as 
you know." 

He glanced round to make sure we were 
out of earshot, then sunk his voice to a 
whisper. 

" Between ourselves," he said, " I 'm not 
so sure of everything myself as I used to be. 
Why is it ? " 

" Perhaps we are getting older," I sug- 
gested. 

He said, " I started golf last year, and 
the first time I took the club in my hand 
I sent the ball a furlong. * It seems an 
easy game,* I said to the man who was 
teaching me. ' Yes, most people find it easy 
at the beginning,' he replied drily. He was 
an old golfer himself; I thought he was 
jealous. I stuck well to the game, and for 
about three weeks I was immensely pleased 
with myself. Then, gradually, I began to find 
out the difficulties. I feel I shall never 
make a good player. Have you ever gone 
through that experience ? " 

" Yes," I replied ; " I suppose that is the 
explanation. The game seems so easy at the 
beginning." 

I left him to his lunch, and strolled west- 



Other People's Business 185 

ward, musing on the time when I should 
have answered that question of his about 
Christmas, or any other question, ofF-hand. 
That good youth time when I knew every- 
thing, when life presented no problems, 
dangled no doubts before me ! 

In those days, wishful to give the world 
the benefit of my wisdom, and seeking for 
a candlestick wherefrom my brilliancy might 
be visible and helpful unto men, I arrived 
before a dingy portal in Chequers Street, St. 
Luke's, behind which a conclave of young 
men, together with a few old enough to have 
known better, met every Friday evening for 
the purpose of discussing and arranging the 
affairs of the universe. " Speaking mem- 
bers " were charged ten-and-sixpence per 
annum, which must have worked out at an 
extremely moderate rate per word ; and 
" gentlemen whose subscriptions were more 
than three months in arrear," became, by Rule 
Seven, powerless for good or evil. We called 
ourselves " The Stormy Petrels," and under 
the sympathetic shadow of those wings I 
laboured two seasons towards the reforma- 
tion of the human race ; until, indeed, our 
treasurer, an earnest young man, and a tire- 



1 86 On the Minding of 

less foe of all that was conventional, departed 
for the East, leaving behind him a balance 
sheet showing that the club owed forty-two 
pounds fifteen and fourpence, and that the 
subscription for the current year, amounting 
to a little over thirty-eight pounds, had 
been " carried forward," but as to where, 
the report afforded no indication. Where- 
upon our landlord, a man utterly without 
ideals, seized our furniture, offering to sell it 
back to us for fifteen pounds. We pointed 
out to him that this was an extravagant price, 
and tendered him five. 

The negotiations terminated with ungentle- 
manly language on his part, and " The 
Stormy Petrels " scattered, never to be fore- 
gathered together again above the troubled 
waters of humanity. Nowadays, listening 
to the feeble plans of modern reformers, I 
cannot help but smile, remembering what 
was done in Chequers Street, St. Luke's, in 
an age when Mrs. Grundy still gave the law 
to literature, while yet the British matron 
was the guide to British art. I am informed 
that there is abroad the question of abolish- 
ing the House of Lords ! Why, " The 
Stormy Petrels'' abolished the aristocracy and 



Other People's Business 187 

the Crown in one evening, and then only- 
adjourned for the purpose of appointing 
a committee to draw up and have ready 
a Republican Constitution by the following 
Friday evening. They talk of Empire 
lounges ! We closed the doors of every 
music-hall in London eighteen years ago by 
twenty-nine votes to seventeen. They had 
a patient hearing, and were ably defended; 
but we found that the tendency of such 
amusements was anti-progressive and against 
the best interests of an intellectually advan- 
cing democracy. I met the mover of the 
condemnatory resolution at the old " Pav " 
the following evening, and we continued 
the discussion over a bottle of bass. He 
strengthened his argument by persuading 
me to sit out the whole of the three songs 
sung by the " Lion Comique ; " but I sub- 
sequently retorted successfully by bringing 
under his notice the dancing of a lady in 
blue tights and flaxen hair. I forget her 
name, but never shall I cease to remember 
her exquisite charm and beauty. Ah, me ! 
how charming and how beautiful " artistes " 
were in those golden days ! Whence have 
they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and 



1 88 On the Minding of 

flaxen hair dance before my eyes to-day, but 
move me not, unless it be towards boredom. 
Where be the tripping witches of twenty 
years ago, whom to see once was to dream of 
for a week, to touch whose white hand would 
have been joy, to kiss whose red lips would 
have been to foretaste Heaven. I heard 
only the other day that the son of an old 
friend of mine had secretly married a lady 
from the front row of the ballet, and invol- 
untarily I exclaimed, " Poor devil ! " There 
was a time when my first thought would 
have been, " Lucky beggar ! is he worthy of 
her ? " For then the ladies of the ballet 
were angels. How could one gaze at them 
— from the shilling pit — and doubt it.^ 
They danced to keep a widowed mother in 
comfort, or to send a younger brother to 
school. Then they were glorious creatures 
a young man did well to worship ; but now- 
adays — 

It is an old jest. The eyes of youth see 
through rose-tinted glasses. The eyes of 
age are dim behind smoke-clouded specta- 
cles. My flaxen friend, you are not the 
angel I dreamed you, nor the exceptional 
sinner some would paint you ; but under 



Other People's Business 189 

your feathers just a woman, — a bundle of 
follies and failings, tied up with some sweet- 
ness and strength. You keep a brougham 
I am sure you cannot afford on your thirty 
shillings a week. There are ladies I know 
in Mayfair, who have paid an extravagant 
price for theirs. You paint and you dye, I 
am told ; it is even hinted you pad. Don't 
we all of us deck ourselves out in virtues 
that are not our own ? When the paint 
and the powder, my sister, is stripped both 
from you and from me, we shall know which 
of us is entitled to look down on the other 
in scorn. 

Forgive me, gentle Reader, for digressing. 
The lady led me astray. I was speaking of 
"The Stormy Petrels," and of the reforms 
they accomplished, which were many. We 
abolished, I remember, capital punishment 
and war ; we were excellent young men at 
heart. Christmas we reformed altogether, 
along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of 
twelve. I never recollect any proposal to 
abolish anything ever being lost when put 
to the vote. There were few things that we 
"Stormy Petrels" did not abolish. We 
attacked Christmas on grounds of expediency 



I go On the Minding of 

and killed it by ridicule. We exposed the 
hollow mockery of Christmas sentiment ; we 
abused the indigestible Christmas dinner, the 
tiresome Christmas party, the silly Christ- 
mas pantomime. Our funny member was 
side-splitting on the subject of Christmas 
Waits ; our social reformer bitter upon 
Christmas drunkenness ; our economist 
indignant upon Christmas charities. Only 
one argument of any weight with us was 
advanced in favour of the festival, and that 
was our leading cynic's suggestion that it 
was worth enduring the miseries of Christ- 
mas to enjoy the soul-satisfying comfort of 
the after reflection that it was all over, and 
could not occur again for another year. 

But since those days when I was prepared 
to put this old world of ours to rights upon 
all matters, I have seen many sights and 
heard many sounds, and I am not quite so 
sure as I once was that my particular views 
are the only possibly correct ones. Christ- 
mas seems to me somewhat meaningless ; 
but I have looked through windows in 
poverty-stricken streets, and have seen dingy 
parlours gay with many chains of coloured 
paper. They stretched from corner to cor- 



Other People's Business 191 

ner of the smoke-grimed ceiling, they fell 
in clumsy festoons from the cheap gasalier, 
they framed the fly-blown mirror and the 
tawdry pictures; and I know tired hands 
and eyes worked many hours to fashion and 
fax those foolish chains, saying, "It will 
please him -she will like to see the room 
00k pretty ; " and as I have looked at them 
they have grown, in some mysterious man- 

"wu T^ '° '"'• ^^^ gaudy-coloured 
child and dog irritates me, I confess ; but I 
have watched a grimy, inartistic personage 
smoothing it affectionately with toil-stained 
hand, while eager faces crowded round to 
admire and wonder at its blatant crudity 
It hangs to this day in its cheap frame above 
the chimney-piece, the one bright spot reliev- 
ing those damp-stained walls; dull eyes 
stare and stare again at it, catching a vista, 
through Its flashy tints, of the far off land of 
art. Christmas Waits annoy me, and I 
yearn to throw open the window and fling 
coal at them, — as once from the window of 
a high flat in Chelsea I did. I doubted 
their being genuine Waits. I was inclined 
to the opinion they were young men seeking 
excuse for making a noise. One of them 



192 On the Minding of 

appeared to know a hymn with a chorus, 
another played the concertina, while a third 
accompanied with a step dance. Instinc- 
tively I felt no respect for them ; they dis- 
turbed me in my work, and the desire grew 
upon me to injure them. It occurred to me 
it would be good sport if I turned out the 
light, softly opened the window, and threw 
coal at them. It would be impossible for 
them to tell from which window in the block 
the coal came, and thus subsequent unpleas- 
antness would be avoided. They were a 
compact little group, and with average luck 
I was bound to hit one of them. 

I adopted the plan. I could not see them 
very clearly. I aimed rather at the noise ; 
and I had thrown about twenty choice 
lumps without effect, and was feeling some- 
what discouraged, when a yell, followed by 
language singularly unappropriate to the 
season, told me that Providence had aided 
my arm. The music ceased suddenly, and 
the party dispersed, apparently in high glee, 
— which struck me as curious. 

One man I noticed remained behind. 
He stood under the lamp-post, and shook 
his fist at the block generally. 



Other People's Business 193 

" Who threw that lump of coal ? " he de- 
manded in stentorian tones. 

To my horror, it was the voice of the 
man at Eighty-eight, an Irish gentleman, a 
journalist like myself. I saw it all, as the 
unfortunate hero always exclaims, too late, 
in the play. He, — Number Eighty-eight, 
— also disturbed by the noise, had evidently 
gone out to expostulate with the rioters. 
Of course my lump of coal had hit him, — 
him the innocent, the peaceful (up till then), 
the virtuous. That is the justice Fate deals 
out to us mortals here below. There were 
ten to fourteen young men in that crowd, 
each one of whom fully deserved that lump 
of coal ; he, the one guiltless, got it — 
seemingly, so far as the dim light from the 
gas lamp enabled me to judge, full in the 
eye. 

As the block remained silent in answer to 
his demand, he crossed the road and 
mounted the stairs. On each landing he 
stopped and shouted, — 

"Who threw that lump of coal ? I want 
the man who threw that lump of coal. Out 
you come ! " 

Now a good man in my place would have 
13 



194 O^ the Minding of 

waited till Number Eighty-eight arrived on 
his landing, and then, throwing open the 
door, would have said with manly can- 
dour, — 

" / threw that lump of coal. I was — ** 
He would not have got further, because at 
that point, I feel confident. Number Eighty- 
eight would have punched his head. There 
would have been an unseemly fracas on the 
staircase, to the annoyance of all the other 
tenants ; and later there would have issued 
a summons and a cross-summons. Angry 
passions would have been roused, bitter 
feelings engendered which might have lasted 
for years. 

I do not pretend to be a good man. I 
doubt if the pretence would be of any use 
were I to try : I am not a sufficiently good 
actor. I said to myself, as I took off my 
boots in the study, preparatory to retiring 
to my bedroom, " Number Eighty-eight 
is evidently not in a frame of mind to listen 
to my story. It will be better to let him 
shout himself cool ; after which he will 
return to his own flat, bathe his eye, and 
obtain some refreshing sleep. In the morn- 
ing, when we shall probably meet as usual 



Other People's Business 195 

on our way to Fleet Street, I will refer to 
the incident casually, and sympathise with 
him. I will suggest to him the truth, — 
that in all probability some fellow-tenant, 
irritated also by the noise, had aimed coal 
at the Waits, hitting him instead by a regret- 
table but pure accident. With tact I may 
even be able to make him see the humour 
of the incident. Later on, in March or 
April, choosing my moment with judgment, 
I will, perhaps, confess that I was that 
fellow-tenant, and over a friendly brandy- 
and-soda we will laugh the whole trouble 
away." 

As a matter of fact, that is what happened. 
Said Number Eighty-eight, — he was a big 
man, as good a fellow at heart as ever lived, 
but impulsive, — " Damned lucky for you, 
old man, you did not tell me at the time." 

" I felt," I replied, " instinctively that it 
was a case for delay." 

There are times when one should control 
one's passion for candour ; and as I was 
saying, Christmas Waits excite no emotion 
in my breast save that of irritation. But I 
have known "Hark, the herald angels sing," 
wheezily chanted by fog-filled throats, and 



196 On the Minding of 

accompanied, hopelessly out of time, by a 
cornet and a flute, bring a great look of 
gladness to a work-worn face. To her it 
was a message of hope and love, mak- 
ing the hard life taste sweet. The mere 
thought of family gatherings, so custo- 
mary at Christmas time, bores us supe- 
rior people ; but I think of an incident 
told me by a certain man, a friend of 
mine. One Christmas, my friend, visiting 
in the country, came face to face with a 
woman whom in town he had often met 
amid very different surroundings. The 
door of the little farmhouse was open ; she 
and an older woman were ironing at a table, 
and as her soft white hands passed to and 
fro, folding and smoothing the rumpled 
heap, she laughed and talked with the older 
woman concerning simple homely things. 
My friend's shadow fell across her work, 
and she looking up, their eyes met ; but 
her face said plainly, " I do not know you 
here, and here you do not know me. Here 
I am a woman loved and respected." My 
friend passed in and spoke to the older 
woman, the wife of one of his host's tenants, 
and she turned towards and introduced the 



Other People's Business 197 

younger : " My daughter, sir. We do not 
see her very often. She is in a place in 
London, and cannot get away. But she 
always spends a few days with us at Christ- 
mas." 

" It is the season for family reunions,*' 
answered my friend with just the suggestion 
of a sneer, and for which he hated himself. 

"Yes, sir," said the woman, not noticing; 
" she has never missed her Christmas with 
us, have you, Bess?" 

" No, mother," replied the girl, simply, 
and bent her head again over her work. 

So for these few days every year this 
woman left her furs and jewels, her fine 
clothes and dainty foods, behind her, and 
lived for a little space with what was clean 
and wholesome. It was the one anchor 
holding her to womanhood; and one Hkes 
to think that it was, perhaps, in the end 
strong enough to save her from the drifting 
waters. All which arguments in favour of 
Christmas and of Christmas customs are, 
I admit, purely sentimental ones, but I have 
lived long enough to doubt whether senti- 
ment has not its legitimate place in the 
economy of life. 



ON THE TIME WASTED IN 

LOOKING BEFORE ONE 

LEAPS 



HAVE you ever noticed the going out 
of a woman ? 

When a man goes out, he says, " I 'm 
going out, sha'n't be long/' 

" Oh, George," cries his wife from the 
other end of the house, " don't go for a 
moment. I want you to — " She hears 
a falHng of hats, followed by the slamming 
of the front door. 

" Oh, George, you 're not gone," she wails. 
It is but the voice of despair. As a matter 
of fact, she knows he has gone. She reaches 
the hall, breathless. 

" He might have waited a minute," she 
mutters to herself, as she picks up the hats, 
" there were so many things I wanted him 
to do." 

She does not open the door and attempt 



Looking Before One Leaps 199 

to stop him, she knows he is already half- 
way down the street. It is a mean, paltry 
way of going out, she thinks; so like a 
man. 

When a woman, on the other hand, goes 
out, people know about it. She does not 
sneak out. She says she is going out. She 
says it, generally, on the afternoon of the 
day before ; and she repeats it, at intervals, 
until tea-time. At tea, she suddenly decides 
that she won't, that she will leave it till the 
day after to-morrow instead. An hour later 
she thinks she will go to-morrow, after all, and 
makes arrangements to wash her hair over- 
night. For the next hour or so she alter- 
nates between fits of exaltation, during which 
she looks forward to going out, and moments 
of despondency, when a sense of foreboding 
falls upon her. At dinner she persuades 
some other woman to go with her ; the other 
woman, once persuaded, is enthusiastic about 
going, until she recollects that she cannot. 
The first woman, however, convinces her 
that she can. 

" Yes," replies the second woman, " but 
then, how about you, dear? You are for- 
getting the Joneses." 



200 On the Time wasted in 

" So I was,'* answers the first woman, 
completely nonplussed. " How very awk- 
ward, and I can't go on Wednesday. I shall 
have to leave it till Thursday, now." 

" But / can't go Thursday," says the second 
woman. 

" Well, you go without me, dear," says the 
first woman, in the tone of one who is sac- 
rificing a life's ambition. 

" Oh, no, dear, I should not think of it," 
nobly exclaims the second woman. " We 
will wait and go together, Friday." 

"I'll tell you what we'll do," says the 
first woman. " We will start early " (this is 
an inspiration), "and be back before the 
Joneses arrive." 

They agree to sleep together ; there is a 
lurking suspicion in both their minds that 
this may be their last sleep on earth. They 
retire early with a can of hot water. At 
intervals, during the night, one overhears 
them splashing water, and talking. 

They come down very late for breakfast, 
and both very cross. Each seems to have 
argued herself into the belief that she has 
been lured into this piece of nonsense, against 
her better judgment, by the persistent folly 



Looking Before One Leaps 201 

of the other one. During the meal each one 
asks the other, every five minutes, if she is 
quite ready. Each one, it appears, has only 
her hat to put on. They talk about the 
weather, and wonder what it is going to do. 
They wish it would make up its mind, one 
way or the other. They are very bitter on 
weather that cannot make up its mind. 
After breakfast it still looks cloudy, and they 
decide to abandon the scheme altogether. 
The first woman then remembers that it is 
absolutely necessary for her, at all events, 
to go. 

" But there is no need for you to come, 
dear," she says. 

Up to that point the second woman was 
evidently not sure whether she wished to go 
or whether she did n't. Now she knows. 

" Oh, yes, I '11 come," she says, " then it 
will be over." 

" I am sure you don't want to go," urges 
the first woman, " and I shall be quicker by 
myself I am ready to start now." 

The second woman bridles. 

" / sha'n't be a couple of minutes," she 
retorts. " You know, dear, it 's generally / 
who have to wait for jo«." 



20 2 On the Time wasted in 

" But you Ve not got your boots on/' the 
first woman reminds her. 

" Well, they won't take any time," is the 
answer. " But, of course, dear, if you 'd 
really rather I did not come, say so." By 
this time she is on the verge of tears. 

" Of course, I would like you to come, 
dear," explains the first in a resigned tone. 
" I thought perhaps you were only coming 
to please me." 

" Oh, no, I 'd like to come," says the 
second woman. 

" Well, we must hurry up," says the first ; 
" I sha'n't be more than a minute myself. 
I 've merely got to change my skirt." 

Half-an-hour later you hear them calling 
to each other, from different parts of the 
house, to know if the other one is ready. 
It appears they have both been ready for 
quite a long while, waiting only for the 
other one. 

" I 'm afraid," calls out the one whose 
turn it is to be downstairs, " it 's going to 
rain." 

" Oh, don't say that," calls back the other 
one. 

" Well, it looks very like it." 



Looking Before One Leaps 203 

"What a nuisance!" answered the up- 
stairs woman ; "shall we put it off? " 

" Well, what do you think, dear ? " replies 
the downstairs. 

They decide they will go, only now they 
will have to change their boots, and put on 
different hats. 

For the next ten minutes they are still 
shouting and running about. Then it seems 
as if they really were ready, nothing remain- 
ing but for them to say, " Good-bye," and go. 

They begin by kissing the children. A 
woman never leaves her house without secret 
misgivings that she will never return to it 
alive. One child cannot be found. When 
it is found it wishes it had n't been. It has 
to be washed, preparatory to being kissed. 
After that, the dog has to be found and 
kissed, and final instructions given to the 
cook. 

Then they open the front door. 

" Oh, George," calls out the first woman, 
turning round again, " are you there ? " 

"Hullo," answers a voice from the dis- 
tance. " Do you want me ? " 

" No, dear, only to say good-bye. I 'm 
going." 



204 On the Time wasted in 

" Oh, good-bye." 

" Good-bye, dear. Do you think it 's 
going to rain ? " 

" Oh, no, I should not say so." 

" George ! " 

"Yes." 

" Have you got any money ? " 

Five minutes later they come running 
back ; the one has forgotten her parasol, the 
other her purse. 

And speaking of purses, reminds one of 
another essential difference between the male 
and female human animal. A man carries 
his money in his pocket. When he wants 
to use it, he takes it out and lays it down. 
This is a crude way of doing things ; a 
woman displays more subtlety. Say she is 
standing in the street and wants fourpence 
to pay for a bunch of violets she has pur- 
chased from a flower-girl. She has two 
parcels in one hand and a parasol in the 
other. With the remaining two fingers of 
the left hand she secures the violets. The 
question then arises, how to pay the girl ? 
She flutters for a few minutes, evidently not 
quite understanding why it is she cannot do 
it. The reason then occurs to her : she has 



Looking Before One Leaps 205 

only two hands and both these are occupied. 
First she thinks she will put the parcels and 
the flowers into her right hand, then she 
thinks she will put the parasol into her left. 
Then she looks round for a table or even a 
chair, but there is not such a thing in the 
whole street. Her difficulty is solved by 
her dropping the parcels and the flowers. 
The girl picks them up for her and holds 
them. This enables her to feel for her 
pocket with her right hand, while waving 
her open parasol about with her left. She 
knocks an old gentleman's hat oflF into the 
gutter, and nearly blinds the flower-girl before 
it occurs to her to close it. This done, she 
leans it up against the flower-girl's basket, 
and sets to work in earnest with both hands. 
She seizes herself firmly by the back, and 
turns the upper part of her body round till 
her hair is in front and her eyes behind. 
Still holding herself firmly with her left hand, 
— did she let herself go, goodness knows 
where she would spin to, — with her right 
she prospects herself The purse is there, 
she can feel it ; the problem is how to get at 
it. The quickest way would, of course, be 
to take off the skirt, sit down on the kerb, 



2o6 On the Time wasted in 

turn it inside out, and work from the bottom 
of the pocket upwards. But this simple 
idea never seems to occur to her. There 
are some thirty folds at the back of the 
dress, between two of these folds commences 
the secret passage. At last, purely by 
chance, she suddenly discovers it, nearly 
upsetting herself in the process, and the 
purse is brought up to the surface. The 
difficulty of opening it still remains. She 
knows it opens with a spring, but the secret 
of that spring she has never mastered, and 
she never will. Her plan is to worry it gen- 
erally until it does open. Five minutes will 
always do it, provided she is not flustered. 

At last it does open. It would be incor- 
rect to say that she opens it. It opens be- 
cause it is sick of being mauled about ; and, 
as likely as not, it opens at the moment 
when she is holding it upside down. If you 
happen to be near enough to look over her 
shoulder, you will notice that the gold and 
silver lie loose within it. In an inner sanc- 
tuary, carefully secured with a second secret 
spring, she keeps her coppers, together with 
a postage-stamp and a draper's receipt, nine 
months old, for elevenpence three-farthings. 



Looking Before One Leaps 207 

I remember the indignation of an old 
bus-conductor, once. Inside we were nine 
women and two men. I sat next the door, 
and his remarks therefore he addressed to 
me. It was certainly taking him some time 
to collect the fares, but I think he would 
have got on better had he been less bus- 
tling; he worried them, and made them 
nervous. 

" Look at that,*' he said, drawing my at- 
tention to a poor lady opposite, who was 
diving in the customary manner for her 
purse ; " they sit on their money, women do. 
Blest if you would n't think they was trying 
to 'atch it." 

At length the lady drew from underneath 
herself an exceedingly fat purse. 

" Fancy riding in a bumpby bus, perched 
up on that thing," he continued. " Think 
what a stamina they must have." He grew 
confidential. " I Ve seen one woman," he 
said, "pull out from underneath 'er a street 
door-key, a tin box of lozengers, a pencil- 
case, a whopping big purse, a packet of hair- 
pins, and a smelling-bottle. Why, you or 
me would be wretched, sitting on a plain 
doorknob, and them women goes about like 



2o8 On the Time wasted in 

that all day. I suppose they gets use to 
it. Drop 'em on an eider-down pillow, and 
they 'd scream. The time it takes me to get 
tuppence out of them, why, it's heart-break- 
ing. First they tries one side, then they tries 
the other. Then they gets up and shakes 
theirselves till the bus jerks them back again, 
and there they are, a more 'opeless 'eap than 
ever. If I 'ad my way I 'd make every bus 
carry a female searcher as could overhaul 'em 
one at a time, and take the money from 'em. 
Talk about the poor pickpocket. What I 
say is, that a man as finds his way into a 
woman's pocket, — well, he deserves what 
he gets." 

But it was the thought of more serious 
matters that lured me into reflections con- 
cerning the overcarefulness of women. It is 
a theory of mine — wrong possibly ; indeed 
I have so been informed — that we pick our 
way through life with too much care. We 
are for ever looking down upon the ground. 
Maybe we do avoid a stumble or two over 
a stone or a brier, but also we miss the blue 
of the sky, the glory of the hills. These 
books that good men write, telling us that 
what they call " success " in life depends on 



Looking Before One Leaps 209 

our flinging aside our youth and wasting our 
manhood in order that we may have the 
means when we are eighty of spending a 
rollicking old age, annoy me. We save all 
our lives to invest in a South Sea Bubble ; 
and in skimping and scheming, we have 
grown mean, and narrow, and hard. We 
will put off the gathering of the roses till 
to-morrow, to-day it shall be all work, all 
bargain-driving, all plotting. Lo, when to- 
morrow comes, the roses are blown ; nor do 
we care for roses, idle things of small market- 
able value ; cabbages are more to our fancy 
by the time to-morrow comes. 

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent ; to be 
faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of 
chess, the victory to the most knowing ; it is 
a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be 
made the best of. Is it the wisest who is 
always the most successful ? I think not. 
The luckiest whist player I ever came across 
was a man who was never quite certain what 
were trumps, and whose most frequent ob- 
servation during the game was " I really beg 
your pardon," addressed to his partner; 
a remark which generally elicited the reply, 
" Oh, don't apologise. All 's well that ends 
14 



I 
2IO On the Time wasted in 

well." The man I knew who made the 
most rapid fortune was a builder in the out- 
skirts of Birmingham, who could not write 
his name, and who, for thirty years of his 
life, never went to bed sober. I do not say 
that forgetful ness of trumps should be cul- 
tivated by whist players. I think that 
builder might have been even more successful 
had he learned to write his name, and had he 
occasionally — not overdoing it — enjoyed a 
sober evening. All I wish to impress is, that 
virtue is not the road to success — of the 
kind we are dealing with. We must find 
other reasons for being virtuous ; maybe 
there are some. The truth is, life is a gamble 
pure and simple, and the rules we lay down 
for success are akin to the infallible systems 
with which a certain class of idiot goes 
armed each season to Monte Carlo. We 
can play the game with coolness and judg- 
ment, decide when to plunge and when to 
stake small ; but to think that wisdom will 
decide it, is to imagine that we have dis- 
covered the law of chance. Let us play the 
game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our 
winnings with a smile, leaving our losings 
with a shrug. Perhaps that is why we have 



Looking Before One Leaps 211 

been summoned to the board, and the cards 
dealt round : that we may learn some of the 
virtues of the good gambler, — his self-con- 
trol, his courage under misfortune, his 
modesty under the strain of success, his firm- 
ness, his alertness, his general indifference to 
fate. Good lessons these, all of them. If 
by the game we learn some of them, our 
time on the green earth has not been 
wasted. If we rise from the table having 
learned only fretfulness and self-pity, I fear 
it has been. 

The waiter taps at the door : " Number 
Five hundred billion and twenty-eight, your 
boatman is waiting, sir." 

So, is it time already ? We pick up our 
counters. Of what use are they ? In the 
country the other side of the river they are 
no tender. The blood-red for gold, and the 
pale green for love, to whom shall we fling 
them ? Here is some poor beggar longing 
to play, let us give them to him as we pass 
out. Poor devil ! the game will amuse him 
— for a while. 

Keep your powder dry, and trust in Provi- 
dence, is the motto of the wise. Wet pow- 
der could never be of any possible use to 



2 12 On the Time wasted in 

you. Dry, it may be, with the help of 
Providence. We will call it Providence, it 
is a prettier name than Chance, — perhaps 
also a truer. 

Another mistake we make when we reason 
out our lives is this : we reason as though 
we were planning for reasonable creatures. 
It is a big mistake. Well-meaning ladies 
and gentlemen make it when they picture 
their ideal worlds. When marriage is re- 
formed, and the social problem solved, when 
poverty and war have been abolished by 
acclamation, and sin and sorrow rescinded 
by an overwhelming parliamentary majority ! 
Ah, then the world will be worthy of our 
living in it. You need not wait, ladies and 
gentlemen, so long as you think for that 
time. No social revolution is needed, no 
slow education of the people is necessary. 
It would all come about to-morrow, if only 
we were reasonable creatures. 

Imagine a world of reasonable beings ! 
The ten commandments would be unneces- 
sary: no reasoning being sins, no reasoning 
creature makes mistakes. There would be 
no rich men, for what reasonable man cares 
for luxury and ostentation. There would 



Looking Before One Leaps 213 

be no poor that I should eat enough for 
two, while my brother in the next street, as 
good a man as I, starves, is not reasonable. 
There would be no difference of opinion on 
any two points : there is only one reason. 
You, dear Reader, would find, that on all 
subjects you were of the same opinion as I. 
No novels would be written, no plays per- 
formed ; the lives of reasonable creatures do 
not afford drama. No mad loves, no mad 
laughter, no scalding tears, no fierce unrea- 
soning, brief-lived joys, no sorrows, no wild 
dreams, — only reason, reason everywhere. 

But for the present we remain unreason- 
able. If I eat this mayonnaise* drink this 
champagne, I shall suffer in my liver. Then 
why do I eat it ? Julia is a charming girl, 
amiable, wise, and witty ; also she has a share 
in a brewery. Then, why does John marry 
Ann ? who is short-tempered, to say the 
least of it, who, he feels, will not make him 
so good a house-wife, who has extravagant 
notions, who has no little fortune. There is 
something about Ann's chin that fascinates 
him, — he could not explain to you what. 
On the whole, Julia is the better looking of 
the two. But the more he thinks of Julia, 



2 14 On the Time wasted in 

the more he is drawn towards Ann. So 
Tom marries Julia, and the brewery fails, 
and Julia, on a holiday, contracts rheumatic 
fever, and is a helpless invalid for life; while 
Ann comes in for ten thousand pounds left 
to her by an Australian uncle no one had 
ever heard of. 

I have been told of a young man who 
chose his wife with excellent care. Said he 
to himself, very wisely, "In the selection of 
a wife a man cannot be too circumspect." 
He convinced himself that the girl was 
everything a helpmate should be. She had 
every virtue that could be expected in a 
woman, no faults, but such as are inseparable 
from a woman. Speaking practically, she 
was perfection. He married her, and found 
she was all he had thought her. Only one 
thing could he urge against her, — that he 
did not like her. And that, of course, was 
not her fault. 

How easy life would be did we know our- 
selves ; could we always be sure that to- 
morrow we should think as we do to-day. 
We fall in love during a summer holiday ; 
she is fresh, delightful, altogether charming ; 
the blood rushes to our head every time we 



Looking Before One Leaps 215 

think of her. Our ideal career is one of 
perpetual service at her feet. It seems im- 
possible that Fate could bestow upon us any 
greater happiness than the privilege of clean- 
ing her boots, and kissing the hem of her 
garment, — if the hem be a little muddy that 
will please us the more. We tell her our 
ambition, and at that moment every word 
we utter is sincere. But the summer holi- 
day passes, and with it the holiday mood, 
and winter finds us wondering how we are 
going to get out of the difficulty into which 
we have landed ourselves. Or, worse still, 
perhaps, the mood lasts longer than is 
usual. We become formally engaged. We 
marry, — I wonder how many marriages are 
the result of a passion that is burnt out 
before the altar-rails are reached? — and 
three months afterwards the little lass is 
broken-hearted to find that we consider the 
lacing of her boots a bore. Her feet seem 
to have grown bigger. There is no excuse 
for us, save that we are silly children, never 
sure of what we are crying for, hurting one 
another in our play, crying very loudly when 
hurt ourselves. 

I knew an American lady once who used 



2 1 6 On the Time wasted in 

to bore me with long accounts of the brutal- 
ities exercised upon her by her husband. 
She had instituted divorce proceedings 
against him. The trial came on, and she 
was highly successful. We all congratulated 
her, and then for some months she dropped 
out of my life. But there came a day when 
we again found ourselves together. One of 
the problems of social life is to know what 
to say to one another when we meet ; every 
man and woman's desire is to appear sym- 
pathetic and clever, and this makes conver- 
sation difficult, because, taking us all round, 
we are neither sympathetic nor clever, — but 
this by the way. Of course, I began to 
talk to her about her former husband. I 
asked her how he was getting on. She 
replied that she thought he was very 
comfortable. 

" Married again ? " I suggested. 

" Yes," she answered. 

" Serve him right," I exclaimed, " and 
his wife too." She was a pretty, bright-eyed 
Uttle woman, my American friend, and I 
wished to ingratiate myself. " A woman 
who would marry such a man, knowing 
what she must have known of him, is sure 



Looking Before One Leaps 217 

to make him wretched, and we may trust 
him to be a curse to her." 

My friend seemed inclined to defend 
him. 

" I think he is greatly improved," she 
argued. 

" Nonsense ! " 1 returned, " a man never 
improves. Once a villain, always a villain." 

" Oh, hush ! " she pleaded," you must n't 
call him that." 

" Why not ? " I answered. " I have 
heard you call him a villain yourself" 

" It was wrong of me," she said, flushing. 
" I 'm afraid he was not the only one to 
be blamed ; we were both foolish in those 
days, but I think we have both learned a 
lesson." 

I remained silent, waiting for the neces- 
sary explanation. 

" You had better come and see him for 
yourself," she added, with a little laugh; 
" to tell the truth, I am the woman who has 
married him. Tuesday is my day. Number 
2, K Mansions," and she ran ofi^, leav- 
ing me staring after her. 

I believe an enterprising clergyman who 
would set up a little church in the Strand, 



2 1 8 On the Time wasted in 

just outside the Law Courts, might do quite 
a trade, re-marrying couples who had just 
been divorced. A friend of mine, a re- 
spondent, told me he had never loved his 
wife more than on two occasions, — the first, 
when she refused him; the second, when she 
came into the witness-box to give evidence 
against him. 

" You are curious creatures, you men," 
remarked a lady once to another man in my 
presence. " You never seem to know your 
own mind." 

She was feeling annoyed with men gener- 
ally. I do not blame her; I feel annoyed 
with them myself sometimes. There is one 
man in particular I am always feeling intensely 
irritated against. He says one thing, and 
acts another. He will talk like a saint, and 
behave like a fool, knows what is right, and 
does what is wrong. But we will not speak 
further of him. He will be all he should be 
one day, and then we will pack him into a 
nice, comfortably-lined box, and screw the 
lid down tight upon him, and put him away 
in a quiet little spot near a church I know of, 
lest he should get up and misbehave himself 
again. 



Looking Before One Leaps 2ig 

The other man, who is a wise man as men 
go, looked at his fair critic with a smile. 

" My dear madam," he repHed, " you are 
blaming the wrong person. I confess I do 
not know my mind, and what little I do 
know of it I do not like. I did not make 
it; I did not select it. I am more dissatis- 
fied with it than you can possibly be. It 
is a greater mystery to me than it is to you, 
and I have to live with it. You should pity, 
not blame me." 

There are moods in which I fall to envy- 
ing those old hermits who frankly, and with 
courageous cowardice, shirked the problem 
of life. There are days when I dream of an 
existence unfettered by the thousand petty 
strings with which our souls lie bound to 
Lilliputia land. I picture myself living in 
some Norwegian sater, high above the black 
waters of a rock-bound fiord. No other 
human creature disputes with me my king- 
dom. I am alone with the whispering fir 
forests and the stars. How I live I am not 
quite sure. Once a month I could journey 
down into the villages, and return laden. I 
should not need much. For the rest, my 
gun and fishing-rod would supply me. I 



2 20 On the Time wasted in 

would have with me a couple of big dogs, 
who would talk to me with their eyes, so 
full of dumb thought ; and together we 
would wander over the uplands, seeking our 
dinner, after the old primitive fashion of the 
men who dreamt not of ten course dinners 
and Savoy suppers. I would cook the food 
myself, and sit down to the meal with a 
bottle of good wine, such as starts a man's 
thoughts (for I am inconsistent, as I ac- 
knowledge, and that gift of civilisation I 
would bear with me into my hermitage). 
Then in the evening, with pipe in mouth, 
beside my log-wood fire, I would sit and 
think, until new knowledge came to me. 
Strengthened by those silent voices that 
are drowned in the roar of Streetland, I 
might, perhaps, grow into something nearer 
to what it was intended that a man should 
be, — might catch a glimpse, perhaps, of the 
meaning of life. 

No, no, my dear lady, into this life of 
renunciation I would not take a companion, 
certainly not of the sex you are thinking of 
— even would she care to come, which I 
doubt. There are times when a man is 
better without the woman, when a woman is 



Looking Before One Leaps 221 

better without the man. Love drags us 
from the depths, makes men and women of 
us, but if we would climb a little nearer to 
the stars we must say good-bye to it. We 
men and women do not show ourselves to 
each other at our best ; too often, I fear, at 
our worst. The woman's highest ideal of 
man is the lover ; to a man the woman is 
always the possible beloved. We see each 
other's hearts, but not each other's souls. 
In each other's presence we never shake 
ourselves free from the earth. Match- 
making mother Nature is always at hand to 
prompt us. A woman lifts us up into 
manhood, but there she would have us stay. 
" Climb up to me," she cries to the lad, 
walking with soiled feet in muddy ways : 
" be a true man, that you may be worthy to 
walk by my side ; be brave to protect me, 
kind and tender and true ; but climb no 
higher ; stay here by my side." The martyr, 
the prophet, the leader of the world's forlorn 
hopes, she would wake from his dream. 
Her arms she would fling about his neck 
holding him down. 

To the woman the man says, " You are 
my wife. Here is your America, within 



2 22 On tiie Time wasted in 

these walls ; here is your work, your duty." 
True, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases 
out of every thousand ; but men and women 
are not made in moulds, and the world's 
work is various. Sometimes, to her sorrow, 
a woman's work lies beyond the home. The 
duty of Mary was not to Joseph. 

The hero in the popular novel is the 
young man who says, " I love you better 
than my soul." Our favourite heroine in 
fiction is the woman who cries to her lover, 
" I would go down into Hell to be with 
you." There are men and women who can- 
not answer thus — the men who dream 
dreams, the women who see visions — im- 
practicable people from the Bayswater point 
of view. But Bayswater would not be the 
abode of peace it is had it not been for 
such. 

Have we not placed sexual love on a ped- 
estal higher than it deserves ? It is a noble 
passion, but it is not the noblest. There is a 
wider love by the side of which it is but as 
the lamp illuminating the cottage, to the 
moonlight bathing the hills and valleys. 
There were two women once. This is a play 
I saw acted in the daylight. They had been 



Looking Before One Leaps 223 

friends from girlhood, till there came be- 
tween them the usual trouble, — a man. A 
weak, pretty creature not worth a thought 
from either of them ; but women love the 
unworthy ; there would be no over-popula- 
tion problem did they not; and this poor 
specimen ill-luck had ordained they should 
contend for. 

Their rivalry brought out all that was 
worst in both of them. It is a mistake to 
suppose love only elevates ; it can debase. 
It was a mean struggle for what to an onlooker 
must have appeared a remarkably unsatis- 
fying prize. The loser might well have left 
the conqueror to her poor triumph, even 
granting it had been gained unfairly. But 
the old, ugly, primeval passions had been 
stirred in these women, and the wedding 
bells closed only the first act. 

The second is not difficult to guess. It 
would have ended in the Divorce Court had 
not the deserted wife felt that a finer revenge 
would be secured to her by silence. 
^ In the third, after an interval of only 
eighteen months, the man died, — the first 
piece of good fortune that seems to have 



2 24 O^ ^^^ Time wasted in 

occurred to him personally throughout the 
play. His position must have been an ex- 
ceedingly anxious one from the beginning. 
Notwithstanding his flabbiness, one cannot 
but regard him with a certain amount of pity, 
not unmixed with amusement. Most of 
life's dramas can be viewed as either farce or 
tragedy according to the whim of the spec- 
tator. The actors invariably play them as 
tragedy ; but then that is the essence of 
good farce acting. 

Thus was secured the triumph of legal 
virtue and the punishment of irregularity, 
and the play might be dismissed as un- 
interestingly orthodox were it not for the 
fourth act, showing how the wronged wife 
came to the woman she had once wronged to 
ask and grant forgiveness. Strangely as it 
may sound, they found their love for one 
another unchanged. They had been long 
parted ; it was sweet to hold each other's 
hands again. Two lonely women, they 
agreed to live together. Those who knew 
them well in this later time say that their 
life was very beautiful, filled with gracious- 
ness and nobility. 



Looking Before One Leaps 225 

I do not say that such a story could ever 
be common, but it is more probable than 
the world might credit. Sometimes the 
man is better without the woman, the woman 
without the man. 



IS 



ON THE NOBILITY OF 
OURSELVES 



AN old Anglicised Frenchman, I used to 
meet often in my earlier journalistic 
days, held a theory concerning man's future 
state that has since come to afford me more 
food for reflection than at the time I should 
have deemed possible. He was a bright- 
eyed, eager little man. One felt no Lotus 
land could be Paradise to him. We build 
our heaven of the stones of our desires : to 
the old, red-bearded Norseman, a foe to fight 
and a cup to drain ; to the artistic Greek, a 
grove of animated statuary ; to the Red 
Indian, his happy hunting-ground; to the 
Turk, his harem ; to the Jew, his New Jeru- 
salem paved with gold ; to others, according 
to their taste, limited by the range of their 
imagination. 

Few things had more terrors for me, when 
a child, than Heaven, as pictured for me 
by certain of the good folks round about me. 



Nobility of Ourselves 227 

I was told that if I were a good lad, kept my 
hair tidy, and did not tease the cat, I would 
probably, when I died, go to a place where 
all day long I would sit still and sing hymns. 
(Think of it ! as reward to a healthy boy for 
being good.) There would be no breakfast 
and no dinner, no tea and no supper. One 
old lady cheered me a little with a hint that 
the monotony might be broken by a little 
manna ; but the idea of everlasting manna 
palled upon me, and my suggestions con- 
cerning the possibilities of sherbet or jumbles 
were scouted as irreverent. There would be 
no school, but also there would be no cricket 
and no rounders. I should feel no desire, 
so I was assured, to do another angel's 
I' dags" by sliding down the heavenly ban- 
isters. My only joy would be to sing. 

"Shall we start singing the moment we 
get up in the morning?" I asked. 

" There won't be any morning," was the 
answer. " There will be no day and no night. 
It will all be one long day without end." 

"And shall we always be singing.?" I 
persisted. 

" Yes, you will be so happy you will always 
want to sing." 



2 28 On the Nobility 

" Sha'n't I ever get tired ? " 

" No, you will never get tired, and you 
will never get sleepy or hungry or thirsty." 

" And does it go on like that for ever ? " 

" Yes, for ever and ever." 

" Will it go on for a million years ? " 

" Yes, a million years, and then another 
million years, and then another million years 
after that. There will never be any end to 
it." 

I can remember to this day the agony of 
those nights, when I would lie awake, think- 
ing of this endless heaven, from which there 
seemed to be no possible escape ; for the 
other place was equally eternal, or I might 
have been tempted to seek refuge there. 

We grown-up folk, our brains dulled by 
the slowly acquired habit of not thinking, do 
wrong to torture children with these awful 
themes. Eternity, Heaven, Hell, are mean- 
ingless words to us. We repeat them, as 
we gabble our prayers, telling our smug, 
self-satisfied selves that we are miserable sin- 
ners. But to the child, the " intelligent 
stranger " in the land, seeking to know, they 
are fearful realities. If you doubt me. 
Reader, stand by yourself beneath the stars, 



of Ourselves 229 

one night, and solve this thought, Eternity. 
Your next address shall be the County- 
Lunatic Asylum. 

My actively inclined French friend held 
cheerier views than are common of man's 
life beyond the grave. His belief was that 
we were destined to constant change, to ever- 
lasting work. We were to pass through the 
older planets, to labour in the greater suns. 

But for such advanced career a more 
capable being was needed. No one of us 
was sufficient, he argued, to be granted a 
future existence all to himself His idea 
was that two or three or four of us, according 
to our intrinsic value, would be combined 
to make a new and more important individ- 
uaHty, fitted for a higher existence. Man, 
he pointed out, was already a collection of 
the beasts. "You and I," he would say, 
tapping first my chest and then his own, " we 
have them all here, — the ape, the tiger, the 
pig, the motherly hen, the gamecock, the 
good ant ; we are all, rolled into one. So 
the man of the future, he will be made up of 
many men, — the courage of one, the wisdom 
of another, the kindliness of a third. 

" Take a city man," he would continue, 



230 On the Nobility 

" say the Lord Mayor ; add to him a poet, 
say Swinburne ; mix them with a religious 
enthusiast, say General Booth. There you 
will have the man fit for the higher life." 

Garibaldi and Bismarck, he held, should 
make a very fine mixture, correcting one 
another ; if needful, extract of Ibsen might 
be added, as seasoning. He thought that 
Irish politicians would mix admirably with 
Scotch divines ; that Oxford Dons would go 
well with lady novelists. He was convinced 
that Count Tolsto'i, a few gaiety Johnnies 
(we called them " mashers " in those days), 
together with a humourist, — he was kind 
enough to suggest myself, — would produce 
something very choice. Queen Elizabeth, 
he fancied, was probably being reserved to 
go — let us hope in the long distant future 
— with Ouida. It sounds a whimsical theory 
set down here in my words, not his ; but the 
old fellow was so much in earnest that few of 
us ever thought to laugh as he talked. In- 
deed, there were moments on starry nights, 
as, walking home from the office, we would 
pause on Waterloo Bridge to enjoy the 
witchery of the long line of the Embank- 
ment lights, when I could almost believe, as 



of Ourselves 231 

I listened to him, in the not impossibility of 
his dreams. 

Even as regards this world, it would often 
be a gain, one thinks, and no loss, if some 
half-dozen of us were rolled together, or 
boiled down, or whatever the process neces- 
sary might be, and something made out of 
us in that way. 

Have not you, my fair Reader, sometimes 
thought to yourself what a delightful hus- 
band Tom this, plus Harry that, plus Dick 
the other, would make ? Tom is always so 
cheerful and good-tempered, yet you feel 
that in the serious moments of life he would 
be lacking. A delightful hubby when you 
felt merry, yes ; but you would not go to 
him for comfort and strength in your 
troubles, now would you ? No, in your 
hour of sorrow, how good it would be to 
have near you grave, earnest Harry! He is 
a " good sort,'* Harry. Perhaps, after all, 
he is the best of the three, — solid, stanch, 
and true. What a pity he is just a trifle com- 
monplace and unambitious ! Your friends, 
not knowing his sterling hidden qualities, 
would hardly envy you; and a husband 
that no other girl envies you — well, that 



232 On the Nobility 

would hardly be satisfactory, would It? 
Dick, on the other hand, is clever and bril- 
liant. He will make his way ; there will 
come a day, you are convinced, when a 
woman will be proud to bear his name. If 
only he were not so self-centered, if only he 
were more sympathetic ! 

But a combination of the three, or rather 
of the best qualities of the three, — Tom's 
good temper, Harry's tender strength, Dick's 
brilUant masterfulness, — that is the man who 
would be worthy of you. 

The woman David Copperfield wanted was 
Agnes and Dora rolled into one. He had 
to take them one after the other, which was 
not so nice. And did he really love Agnes, 
Mr. Dickens ; or merely feel he ought to ? 
Forgive me, but I am doubtful concerning 
that second marriage of Copperfield's. Come, 
strictly between ourselves, Mr. Dickens, was 
not David, good human soul ! now and 
again a wee bit bored by the immaculate 
Agnes ? She made him an excellent wife, I 
am sure. She never ordered oysters by the 
barrel, unopened. It would, on any day, 
have been safe to ask Traddles home to 
dinner ; in fact, Sophie and the whole rose- 



of Ourselves 233 

garden might have accompanied him ; Agnes 
would have been equal to the occasion. 
The dinner would have been perfectly- 
cooked and served, and Agnes' sweet smile 
would have pervaded the meal. But after 
the dinner, when David and Traddles sat 
smoking alone, while from the drawing-room 
drifted down the notes of high class, eleva- 
ting music, played by the saintly Agnes, did 
they never, glancing covertly towards the 
empty chair between them, see the laughing, 
curl-framed face of a very foolish little 
woman, — one of those foolish little women 
that a wise man thanks God for making, — 
and wish, in spite of all, that it were flesh 
and blood, not shadow. 

Oh, you foolish wise folk, who would re- 
model human nature ! Cannot you see how 
great is the work given unto childish hands ? 
Think you that in well-ordered housekeep- 
ing and high-class conversation lies the whole 
making of a man ? Foolish Dora, fashioned 
by clever old magician Nature, who knows 
that weakness and helplessness are as a talis- 
man calling forth strength and tenderness in 
man, trouble yourself not unduly about those 
oysters nor the underdone mutton, little 



2 34 O^ t^^ Nobility 

woman. Good plain cooks at twenty pounds 
a year will see to these things for us ; and, 
now and then, when a windfall comes our 
way, we will dine together at a moderate- 
priced restaurant where these things are 
managed even better. Your work, Dear, is 
to teach us gentleness and kindliness. Lay 
your curls here, child. It is from such as 
you that we learn wisdom. Foolish wise 
folk sneer at you ; foolish wise folk would 
pull up the useless lilies, the needless roses, 
from the garden, would plant in their places 
only serviceable, wholesome cabbage. But 
the Gardener, knowing better, plants the 
silly short-lived flowers ; foolish wise folk 
asking for what purpose. 

As for Agnes, Mr. Dickens, do you know 
what she always makes me think of? You 
will not mind my saying? — the woman one 
reads about. Frankly, I don*t believe in 
her. I do not refer to Agnes in particular, 
but the women of whom she is a type, the 
faultless women we read of. Women have 
many faults, but, thank God, they have one 
redeeming virtue, — they are none of them 
faultless. 

But the heroine of fiction ! oh, a terrible 



of Ourselves 235 

dragon of virtue is she. May Heaven pre- 
serve us poor men, undeserving though we 
be, from a life with the heroine of fiction ! 
She is all soul and heart and intellect, with 
never a bit of human nature to catch hold 
of her by. Her beauty, it appalls one, it is 
so painfully indescribable. Whence comes 
she, whither goes she, why do we never meet 
her like ? Of women I know a goodish few, 
and I look among them for her prototype ; 
but I find it not. They are charming, they 
are beautiful, all these women that I know. 
It would not be right for me to tell you. 
Ladies, the esteem and veneration with which 
I regard you all. You yourselves, blushing, 
would be the first to check my ardour. But 
yet, dear Ladies, seen even through my eyes, 
you come not near the ladies that I read 
about. You are not — if I may be permitted 
an expressive vulgarism — in the same street 
mth them. Your beauty I can look upon 
and retain my reason — for whatever value 
that may be to me. Your conversation, I 
admit, is clever and brilliant in the extreme ; 
your knowledge vast and various ; your cul- 
ture quite Bostonian ; yet you do not- — I 
hardly know how to express it — you do 



236 On the Nobility 

not shine with the sixteen full-moon-power 
of the heroine of fiction. You do not — and 
I thank you for it — impress me with the 
idea that you are the only women on earth. 
You, even you, possess tempers of your 
own. I am inclined to think you take an 
interest in your clothes. I would not be 
sure, even, that you do not mingle a little of 
" your own hair " (you know what I mean) 
with the hair of your head. There is in 
your temperament a vein of vanity, a sug- 
gestion of selfishness, a spice of laziness. I 
have known you a trifle unreasonable, a little 
inconsiderate, slightly exacting. Unlike the 
heroine of fiction, you have a certain number 
of human appetites and instincts ; a few 
human foUies, perhaps a human fault, or 
shall we say two ? In short, dear Ladies, 
you also, even as we men, are the children 
of Adam and Eve. Tell me, if you know, 
where I may meet with this supernatural 
sister of yours, this woman that one reads 
about. She never keeps any one waiting 
while she does her back hair; she is never 
indignant with everybody else in the house 
because she cannot find her own boots ; she 
never scolds the servants ; she is never cross 



of Ourselves 237 

with the children ; she never slams the door ; 
she is never jealous of her younger sister ; she 
never lingers at the gate with any cousin but 
the right one. 

Dear me ! where do they keep them, these 
women that one reads about ? I suppose 
where they keep the pretty girl of Art. 
You have seen her, have you not. Reader, 
the pretty girl in the picture ? She leaps 
the six-barred gate with a yard and a half to 
spare, turning round in her saddle the while 
to make some smiling remark to the comic 
man behind, who of course is standing on 
his head in the ditch. She floats gracefully 
off Dieppe on stormy mornings. Her bai- 
gnoire — generally of chiffon and old point 
lace — has not lost a curve. The older 
ladies, bathing round her, look wet. Their 
dress clings damply to their limbs. But the 
pretty girl of Art dives, and never a curl of 
her hair is disarranged. The pretty girl of 
Art stands lightly on tiptoe and volleys a 
tennis ball six feet above her head. The 
pretty girl of Art keeps the head of the 
punt straight against a stiff current and a 
strong wind. She never gets the water up 
her sleeve and down her back and all over 



238 On the Nobility 

the cushions. Her pole never sticks in the 
mud, with the steam launch ten yards off 
and the man looking the other way. The 
pretty girl of Art skates in high-heeled 
French shoes at an angle of forty-five to the 
surface of the ice, both hands in her muff. 
She never sits down plump, with her feet 
a yard apart, and says, " Ough ! '' The 
pretty girl of Art drives tandem down Pic- 
cadilly, during the height of the season, at 
eighteen miles an hour. It never occurs to 
her leader that the time has now arrived for 
him to turn round and get into the cart. 
The pretty girl of Art rides her bicycle 
through the town on market day, carrying 
a basket of eggs and smiling right and left. 
She never throws away both her handles and 
runs into a cow. The pretty girl of Art goes 
trout fishing in open-work stockings, under a 
blazing sun, with a bunch of dew-bespangled 
primroses in her hair ; and every time she 
gracefully flicks her rod she hauls out a 
salmon. She never ties herself up to a tree, 
or hooks the dog. She never comes home, 
soaked and disagreeable, to tell you that she 
caught six, but put them all back again, 
because they were merely two or three 



of Ourselves 239 

pounders, and not worth the trouble of 
carrying. The pretty girl of Art plays 
croquet with one hand, and looks as if she 
enjoyed the game. She never tries to acci- 
dentally kick her ball into position when 
nobody is noticing, or stands it out that 
she is through a hoop that she knows she 
is n't. 

She is a good, all-round sportswoman, is 
the pretty girl in the picture. The only 
thing I have to say against her is that she 
makes one dissatisfied with the girl out of 
the picture, — the girl who mistakes a punt 
for a teetotum, so that you land feeling as 
if you had had a day in the Bay of Biscay ; 
and who, every now and again, stuns you with 
the thick end of the pole : the girl who 
does not skate with her hands in her muff, 
but who, throwing them up to Heaven, says, 
" I 'm going," and who goes, taking care 
that you go with her ; the girl who, as you 
brush her down and try to comfort her, ex- 
plains to you indignantly that the horse took 
the corner too sharply and never noticed 
the milestone ; the girl whose hair sea-water 
does not improve. 

There can be no doubt about it : that is 



240 On the Nobility 

where they keep the good woman of Fiction, 
where they keep the pretty girl of Art. 

Does it not occur to you, Messieurs les 
Auteurs^ that you are sadly disturbing us ? 
These women that are a combination of 
Venus, St. Cecilia, and Elizabeth Fry ! you 
paint them for us in your glowing pages ; it 
is not kind of you, knowing, as you must, 
the women we have to put up with. 

Would we not be happier, we men and 
women, were we to idealise one another less ? 
My dear young Lady, you have nothing 
whatever to complain to Fate about, I assure 
you. Unclasp those pretty hands of yours, 
and come away from the darkening window. 
Jack is as good a fellow as you deserve ; 
don't yearn so much. Sir Galahad, my dear, 
— Sir Galahad rides and fights in the land 
that lies beyond the sunset, far enough away 
from this noisy little earth, where you and I 
spend much of our time tittle-tattUng, flirt- 
ing, wearing fine clothes, and going to shows. 
And, besides, you must remember Sir Gala- 
had was a bachelor; as an idealist he was 
wise. Your Jack is by no means a bad sort 
of knight, as knights go nowadays in this 
un-idyllic world. There is much solid 



of Ourselves 241 

honesty about him, and he does not pose. 
He is not exceptional, I grant you ; but, my 
dear, have you ever tried the exceptional 
man ! Yes, he is very nice in a drawing- 
room, and it is interesting to read about him 
in the Society papers : you will find most of 
his good qualities there ; take my advice, 
don't look into him too closely. You be 
content with Jack, and thank Heaven he is 
no worse. We are not saints, we men, — 
none of us ; and our beautiful thoughts, I 
fear, we write in poetry, not action. The 
White Knight, my dear young Lady, with 
his pure soul, his heroic heart, his life's 
devotion to a noble endeavour, does not live 
down here to any great extent. They have 
tried it, one or two of them, and the world 
— you and I : the world is made up of you 
and I — have generally starved, and hooted 
them. There are not many of them left 
now : do you think you would care to be 
the wife of one, supposing one were to be 
found for you ? Would you care to live 
with him in two furnished rooms in Clerken- 
well, die with him on a chair bedstead ? A 
century hence they will put up a statue to 

him, and you may be honoured as the wife 
16 



242 On the Nobility 

who shared with him his sufferings. Do 
you think you are woman enough for that ? 
If not, thank your stars you have secured, 
for your own exclusive use, one of us un- 
exceptional men who knows no better than 
to admire you. Tou are not exceptional. 

And in us ordinary men there is some 
good. It wants finding, that is all. We are 
not so commonplace as you think us. 
Even your Jack, fond of his dinner, his 
conversation four-cornered by the Sporting 
Press — yes, I agree he is not interesting, as 
he sits snoring in the easy-chair ; but, believe 
it or not, there are the makings of a great 
hero in Jack, if Fate would but be kinder to 
him and shake him out of his ease. 

Dr. Jekyll contained beneath his ample 
waistcoat not two egos, but three — not only 
Hyde but another, a greater than Jekyll — 
a man as near to the angels as Hyde was 
to the demons. These well-fed City men, 
these Gaiety Johnnies, these plough-boys, 
apothecaries, thieves! within each one Hes 
hidden the hero, did Fate, the sculptor, 
choose to use his chisel. That little Drab 
we have noticed now and then, our way 
taking us often past the end of the court. 



of Ourselves 243 

there was nothing by which to distinguish 
her. She was not over-clean, could use 
coarse language on occasion, — just the 
spawn of the streets ; take care lest the cloak 
of our child should brush her. 

One morning the district Coroner, not 
generally speaking, a poet himself, but an 
adept at discovering poetry, buried under 
unhkely rubbish-heaps, tells us more about 
her. She earned six shillings a week, and 
upon it supported a bedridden mother and 
three younger children. She was housewife, 
nurse, mother, breadwinner, rolled into one. 
Yes, there are heroines out of fiction. 

So loutish Tom has won the Victoria 
Cross, — dashed out under a storm of bullets 
and rescued the riddled flag. Who would 
have thought it of loutish Tom ? The vil- 
lage ale-house one always deemed the goal of 
his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom, 
and we find him out. To Harry the Fates 
were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry, 
— drank, knocked his wife about, they say. 
Bury him ; we are well rid of him ; he was 
good for nothing. Are we sure ? 

Let us acknowledge we are sinners. We 
know, those of us who dare to examine our- 



244 O^ ^^^ Nobility 

selves, that we are capable of every meanness, 
of every wrong under the sun. It is by the 
accident of circumstance, aided by the help- 
ful watchfulness of the policeman, that our 
possibilities of crime are known only to our- 
selves. But having acknowledged our evil, 
let us also acknowledge that we are capable 
of greatness. The martyrs who faced death 
and torture unflinchingly for conscience' sake 
were men and women like ourselves. They 
had their wrong side. Before the small 
trials of daily life they no doubt fell as we 
fall. By no means were they the pick of 
humanity. Thieves many of them had been, 
and murderers, evil-livers, and evil-doers. 
But the nobility was there also, lying dor- 
mant, and their day came. Among them 
must have been men who had cheated their 
neighbours over the counter ; men who had 
been cruel to their wives and children ; self- 
ish, scandal-mongering women. In easier 
times their virtue might never have been 
known to any but their Maker. 

In every age and in every period, when 
and where Fate has called upon men and 
women to play the man, human nature has 
not been found wanting. They were a poor 



of Ourselves 245 

lot, those French aristocrats that the Terror 
seized : cowardly, selfish, greedy, had been 
their lives. Yet there must have been good 
even in them. When the little things that 
in their little lives they had thought so great 
were swept away from them ; when they 
found themselves face to face with the 
realities, — then even they played the man. 
Poor shuffling Charles the First, crusted 
over with weakness and folly, deep down in 
him at last, we find the great gentleman. 

I like to hear stories of the littleness of 
great men. 1 like to think that Shakespeare 
was fond of his glass. I even cling to the 
tale of that disgraceful final orgy with friend 
Ben Jonson. Possibly the story may not 
be true, but I hope it was. I like to think 
of him as poacher, as village ne'er-do-well, 
denounced by the local grammar-school 
master, preached at by the local J. P. of the 
period. I like to reflect that Cromwell had 
a wart on his nose ; the thought makes me 
more contented with my own features. I 
like to think that he put sweets upon the 
chairs, to see finely-dressed ladies spoil their 
frocks ; to tell myself that he roared with 
laughter at the silly jest, like any East End 



246 On the Nobility 

'Arry with his Bank HoHday squirt of dirty 
water. I like to read that Carlyle threw 
bacon at his wife and occasionally made 
himself highly ridiculous over small annoy- 
ances, that would have been smiled at by a 
man of well-balanced mind. I think of the 
fifty foolish things a week / do, and say to 
myself, " I, too, am a literary man." 

I like to think that even Judas had his 
moments of nobility, his good hours when 
he would willingly have laid down his life 
for his Master. Perhaps even to him there 
came, before the journey's end, the memory 
of a voice saying, " Thy sins be forgiven 
thee.'* There must have been good even 
in Judas. 

Virtue lies like the gold in quartz : there 
is not very much of it, and much pains has 
to be spent on the extracting of it. But 
Nature seems to think it worth her while to 
fashion these huge useless stones, if in them 
she may hide away her precious metals. 
Perhaps, also, in human nature she cares 
little for the mass of dross, provided that by 
crushing and cleansing she can extract from 
it a little gold, sufficient to repay her for the 
labour of the world. We wonder why she 



of Oursel 



urseives 



247 



troubles to make the stone. Why cannot 
the gold lie in nuggets on the surface ? But 
her methods are secrets to us. Perchance 
there is a reason for the quartz. Perchance 
there is a reason for the evil and folly, 
through which run, unseen to the careless 
eye, the tiny veins of virtue. 

Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold 
is there. We claim to have it valued. The 
evil that there is in man no tongue can tell. 
We are vile among the vile, a little evil 
people. But we are great. Pile up the 
bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at 
Heaven's gate, calling for vengeance, yet we 
are great, — with a greatness and a virtue 
that the untempted angels may not reach to. 
The written history of the human race, it is 
one long record of cruelty, of falsehood, of 
oppression. Think you the world would 
be spinning round the sun unto this day, if 
that written record were all ? Sodom, God 
would have spared had there been found 
ten righteous men within its walls. The 
world is saved by its just men. History 
sees them not ; she is but the newspaper, a 
report of accidents. Judge you life by 
that ? Then you shall believe that the true 



248 On the Nobility 

Temple of Hymen is the Divorce Court; 
that men are of two classes only, the thief 
and the policeman ; that all noble thought 
is but a politician's catchword. History 
sees only the destroying conflagrations ; she 
takes no thought of the sweet firesides. 
History notes the wrong; but the patient 
suffering, the heroic endeavour, that, slowly 
and silently, as the soft processes of Nature 
reclothing with verdure the passion-wasted 
land, obliterate that wrong, she has no eyes 
for. In the days of cruelty and oppression 

— not altogether yet of the past, one fears 

— must have lived gentle-hearted men and 
women, healing with their help and sym- 
pathy the wounds that else the world had 
died of. After the thief, riding with jingle 
of sword and spur, comes, mounted on his 
ass, the good Samaritan. The pyramid of 
the world's evil — God help us ! it rises 
high, shutting out almost the sun. But the 
record of man's good deeds, it lies written in 
the laughter of the children, in the light of 
lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young 
men ; it shall not be forgotten. The fires 
of persecution served as torches to show 
Heaven the heroism that was in man. 



of Ourselves 249 

From the soil of tyranny sprang self-sacri- 
fice and daring for the Right. Cruelty ! 
what is it but the vile manure, making the 
ground ready for the flowers of tenderness 
and pity ? Hate and Anger shriek to one 
another across the ages, but the voices of 
Love and Comfort are none the less existent 
that they speak in whispers, lips to ear. 

We have done wrong, oh, ye witnessing 
Heavens, but we have done good. We 
claim justice. We have laid down our lives 
for our friends : greater love hath no man 
than this. We have fought for the Right. 
We have died for the Truth — as the Truth 
seemed to us. We have done noble deeds ; 
we have lived noble lives ; we have com- 
forted the sorrowful ; we have succoured 
the weak. Failing, falling, making in our 
blindness many a false step, yet we have 
striven. For the sake of the army of just 
men and true, for the sake of the myriads 
of patient, loving women, for the sake of the 
pitiful and helpful, for the sake of the good 
that lies hidden within us, — spare us. 
Lord! 



ON THE MOTHERLINESS 

OF MAN 



IT was only a piece of broken glass. 
From its shape and colour, I should 
say it had, in its happier days, formed por- 
tion of a cheap scent-bottle. Lying isolated 
on the grass, shone upon by the early 
morning sun, it certainly appeared at its 
best. It attracted him. 

He cocked his head, and looked at it with 
his right eye. Then he hopped round to 
the other side, and looked at it with his left 
eye. With either optic it seemed equally 
desirable. 

That he was an inexperienced young 
rook goes without saying. An older bird 
would not have given a second glance to the 
thing. Indeed, one would have thought 
his own instinct might have told him that 
broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's 



Motherliness of Man 251 

nest. But its glitter drew him too strongly 
for resistance. I am inclined to suspect that 
at some time, during the growth of his 
family tree, there must have occurred a 
mesalliance^ perhaps worse. Possibly a 
strain of magpie blood ? — one knows the 
character of magpies, or rather their lack of 
character — and such things have happened. 
But I will not pursue further so painful a 
train : I throw out the suggestion as a 
possible explanation, that is all. 

He hopped nearer. Was it a sweet 
illusion, this flashing fragment of rainbow ; 
a beautiful vision to fade upon approach, 
typical of so much that is un-understandable 
in rook life ? He made a dart forward and 
tapped it with his beak. No, it was real, — 
as fine a lump of jagged green glass as any 
newly-married rook could desire, and to be 
had for the taking. She would be pleased 
with it. He was a well-meaning bird ; the 
mere upward inclination of his tail sug- 
gested earnest though possibly ill-directed 
endeavour. 

He turned it over. It was an awkward 
thing to carry ; it had so very many corners. 
But he succeeded at last in getting it firmly 



252 On the Motherliness 

between his beak, and in haste, lest some 
other bird should seek to dispute with him 
its possession, at once flew off with it. 

A second rook, who had been watching 
the proceedings from the lime-tree, called to 
a third who was passing. Even with my 
limited knowledge of the language I found 
it easy to follow the conversation ; it was so 
obvious. 

" Issachar ! " 

" Hallo ! " 

" What do you think ? Zebulun *s found 
a piece of broken bottle. He *s going to 
line his nest with it.** 

"No!" 

" God's truth. Look at him. There he 
goes ; he *s got it in his beak.'* 

"Well, I'm — !" 

And they both burst into a laugh. 

But Zebulun heeded them not. If he 
overheard, he probably put down the whole 
dialogue to jealousy. He made straight for 
his tree. By standing with my left cheek 
pressed close against the window-pane, I was 
able to follow him. He is building in what 
we call the Paddock elms, — a suburb com- 
menced only last season, but rapidly grow- 



of Man 253 

ing. I wanted to see what his wife would 
say. 

At first she said nothing. He laid it 
carefully down on the branch near the half- 
finished nest, and she stretched up her head 
and looked at it. 

Then she looked at him. For about a 
minute neither spoke. I could see that the 
situation was becoming strained. When she 
did open her beak, it was with a subdued 
tone, that had a vein of weariness running 
through it. 

" What is it ? " she asked. 

He was evidently chilled by her manner. 
As I have explained, he is an inexperienced 
young rook. This is clearly his first wife, 
and he stands somewhat in awe of her. 

" Well, I don't exactly know what it 's 
c ailed ^^ he answered. 

" Oh ! " 

"No. But it's pretty, isn't it?" he 
added. He moved it, trying to get it where 
the sun might reach it. It was evident he 
was admitting to himself that, seen in the 
shade, it lost much of its charm. 

" Oh, yes ; very pretty," was the rejoinder ; 
"perhaps you '11 tell me what you 're going 
to do with it." 



2 54 O^ ^^^ Motherliness 

The question further discomforted him. 
It was growing upon him that this thing 
was not going to be the success he had anti- 
cipated. It would be necessary to proceed 
warily. 

" Of course it 's not a twig," he began, 

" I see it is n't." 

" No. You see, the nest is nearly all 
twigs as it is, and I thought — " 

" Oh, you did think." 

" Yes, my dear. I thought — unless you 
are of opinion that it 's too showy — I 
thought we might work it in somewhere." 

Then she flared out. 

" Oh, did you ? You thought that a 
good idea. An A i prize idiot I seem to 
have married, I do. You 've been gone 
twenty minutes, and you bring me back an 
eight-cornered piece of broken glass, which 
you think we might ' work into * the nest. 
You 'd like to see me sitting on it for a 
month, you would. You think it would 
make a nice bed for the children to lie on. 
You don't think you could manage to find a 
packet of mixed pins if you went down again, 
I suppose ? They 'd look pretty * worked 
in ' somewhere, don't you think ? — Here, 



of Man 255 

get out of my way. I '11 finish this nest by 
myself." She always had been short with 
him. 

She caught up the offending object — it 
was a fairly heavy lump of glass — and 
flung it out of the tree with all her force. I 
heard it crash through the cucumber frame. 
That makes the seventh pane of glass 
broken in that cucumber frame this week. 
The couple in the branch above are the 
worst. Their plan of building is the most 
extravagant, the most absurd, I ever heard 
of They hoist up ten times as much ma- 
terial as they can possibly use ; you might 
think they were going to build a block and 
let it out in flats to the other rooks. Then 
what they don't want they fling down again. 
Suppose we built on such a principle. Sup- 
pose a human husband and wife were to start 
erecting their house in Piccadilly Circus, let 
us say ; and suppose the man spent all the 
day steadily carrying bricks up the ladder 
while his wife laid them, never asking her 
how many she wanted, whether she did n't 
think he had brought up sufficient, but just 
accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion, 
bringing up every brick he could find. 



256 On the Motherliness 

And then suppose, when evening came, and 
looking round they found they had some 
twenty cart-loads of bricks lying unused 
upon the scaffold, they were to begin 
flinging them down into Waterloo Place. 
They would get themselves into trouble ; 
somebody would be sure to speak to them 
about it. Yet that is precisely what those 
birds do, and nobody says a word to them. 
They are supposed to have a President. 
He lives by himself in the yew-tree outside 
the morning-room window. What I want 
to know is what he is supposed to be good 
for. This is the sort of thing I want him 
to look into. I would like him to be worm- 
ing underneath one evening when those two 
birds are tidying up ; perhaps he would do 
something then. I have done all I can. I 
have thrown stones at them that, in the 
course of nature, have returned to earth 
again, breaking more glass. I have blazed 
at them with a revolver ; but they have come 
to regard this proceeding as a mere expression 
of lightheartedness on my part, possibly 
confusing me with the Arab of the Desert, 
who, I am given to understand, expresses 
himself thus in moments of deep emotion. 



of Man 257 

They merely retire to a safe distance to 
watch me, no doubt regarding me as a poor 
performer, inasmuch as I do not also dance 
and shout between each shot. I have no 
objection to their building there, if they only 
would build sensibly. I want somebody 
to speak to them to whom they will pay 
attention. 

You can hear them in the evening, dis- 
cussing the matter of this surplus stock. 

" Don't you work any more,*' he says, as 
he comes up with the last load ; " you '11 tire 
yourself." 

" Well, I am feeling a bit done up," she 
answers, as she hops out of the nest and 
straightens her back. 

" You 're a bit peckish, too, I expect," he 
adds sympathetically. " I know I am. We 
will have a scratch down, and be off." 

"What about all this stuff?" she asks, 
while titivating herself; "we'd better not 
leave it about, it looks so untidy." 

" Oh, we '11 soon get rid of that," he an- 
swers. " I '11 have that down in a jiffy." 

To help him, she seizes a stick and is 
about to drop it. He darts forward and 
snatches it from her. 
17 



258 On the Motherliness 

" Don't you waste that one," he cries ; 
" that 's a rare one, that is. You see me hit 
the old man with it." 

And he does. What the gardener says, I 
will leave you to imagine. 

Judged from its structure, the rook family 
is supposed to come next in intelligence to 
man himself. Judging from the intelligence 
displayed by members of certain human 
families with whom I have come in contact, 
I can quite believe it. That rooks talk I 
am positive. No one can spend half-an- 
hour watching a rookery without being con- 
vinced of this. Whether the talk be always 
wise and witty, I am not prepared to main- 
tain ; but that there is a good deal of it is 
certain. A young French gentleman of my 
acquaintance, who visited England to study 
the language, told me that the impression 
made upon him by his first social evening 
in London was that of a parrot-house. 
Later on, when he came to comprehend, he, 
of course, recognised the brilliancy and depth 
of the average London drawing-room talk ; 
but that is how, not comprehending, it im- 
pressed him at first. Listening to the riot 
of a rookery is much the same experience. 



of Man 259 

The conversation to us sounds meaningless ; 
the rooks themselves would probably describe 
it as sparkling. 

There is a Misanthrope I know who 
hardly ever goes into Society. I argued the 
question with him one day. "Why should 
I ? " he replied ; " I know, say a dozen men 
and women, with whom intercourse is a pleas- 
ure ; they have ideas of their own which 
they are not afraid to voice. To rub brains 
with such is a rare and goodly thing, and I 
thank Heaven for their friendship ; but they 
are sufficient for my leisure. What more do 
I require ? What is this 'Society' of which 
you all make so much ado ? I have sampled 
it, and I find it unsatisfying. Analyse it 
into its elements, what is it ? Some person 
I know very slightly, who knows me very 
slightly, asks me to what you call an ' At 
Home.' The evening comes ; I have done 
my day's work and I have dined. I have 
been to a theatre or concert, or I have spent 
a pleasant hour or so with a friend. I am 
more inclined for bed than anything else, 
but I pull myself together, dress, and drive 
to the house. While I am taking off my 
hat and coat in the hall, a man enters I met 



2 6o On the Motherliness 

a few hours ago at the Club. He is a man 
I have very little opinion of, and he, prob- 
ably, takes a similar view of me. Our minds 
have no thought in common, but as it is 
necessary to talk, I tell him it is a warm 
evening. Perhaps it is a warm evening, 
perhaps it is n*t ; in either case he agrees 
with me. I ask him if he is going to 
Ascot. I do not care a straw whether he is 
going to Ascot or not. He says he is not 
quite sure, but asks me what chance Passion- 
Flower has for the Thousand Guineas. I 
know he does n*t value my opinion on the 
subject at a brass farthing — he would be a 
fool if he did ; but I cudgel my brains to 
reply to him, as though he were going to 
stake his shirt on my advice. We reach 
the first floor, and are mutually glad to get 
rid of one another. I catch my hostess* eye. 
She looks tired and worried ; she would be 
happier in bed, only she does n't know it. 
She smiles sweetly, but it is clear she has not 
the slightest idea who I am, and is waiting 
to catch my name from the butler. I whis- 
per it to him. Perhaps he will get it right, 
perhaps he won't ; it is quite immaterial. 
They have asked two hundred and forty 



of Man 261 

guests, some seventy-five of whom they 
know by sight; for the rest, any chance 
passer-by, able, as the theatrical advertise- 
ments say, ' to dress and behave as a gentle- 
man,* would do every bit as well. Indeed, 
I sometimes wonder why people go to the 
trouble and expense of invitation cards at all. 
A sandwich-man outside the door would 
answer the purpose. ' Lady Tompkins, At 
Home this afternoon from three to seven ; 
Tea and Music. Ladies and Gentlemen 
admitted on presentation of visiting card. 
Afternoon dress indispensable.' The crowd 
is the thing wanted ; as for the items, well, 
tell me, what is the difference, from the 
Society point of view, between one man in a 
black frock-coat and another ? 

" I remember being once invited to a party 
at a house in Lancaster Gate. I had met 
the woman at a picnic. In the same green 
frock and parasol I might have recognised 
her the next time I saw her. In any other 
clothes I did not expect to. My cabman 
took me to the house opposite, where they 
were also giving a party. It made no differ- 
ence to any of us. The hostess — I never 
learnt her name — said it was very good of 



262 On the Motherliness 

me to come, and then shunted me off on to a 
Colonial Premier. I did not catch his name, 
and he did not catch mine, which was not 
extraordinary, seeing that my hostess did not 
know it, who, she whispered to me, had 
come over from wherever it was, she did not 
seem to be very sure, principally to make 
my acquaintance. Half through the even- 
ing, and by accident, I discovered my mis- 
take, but judged it too late to say anything 
then. I met a couple of people I knew, 
had a little supper with them, and came 
away. The next afternoon I met my right 
hostess, — the lady who should have been 
my hostess. She thanked me effusively for 
having sacrificed the previous evening to her 
and her friends ; she said she knew how 
seldom I went out : that made her feel my 
kindness all the more. She told me that 
the Brazilian Minister's wife had told her 
that I was the cleverest man she had ever 
met. I often think I should like to meet 
that man, whoever he may be, and thank 
him. 

" But perhaps the butler does pronounce 
my name rightly, and perhaps my hostess 
actually does recognise me. She smiles, and 



of Man 263 

says she was so afraid I was not coming. 
She implies that all the other guests are but 
as a feather in her scales of joy compared 
with myself. I smile in return, wondering 
to myself how I look when I do smile. I 
have never had the courage to face my own 
smile in the looking-glass. I notice the 
Society smile of other men, and it is not re- 
assuring. I murmur something about my 
not having been likely to forget this even- 
ing, in my turn, seeking to imply that I 
have been looking forward to it for weeks. 
A few men shine at this sort of thing, but 
they are a small percentage, and without 
conceit I regard myself as no bigger a fool 
than the average male. Not knowing what 
else to say, I tell her also that it is a warm 
evening. She smiles archly as though there 
were some hidden witticism in the remark, 
and I drift away, feeling ashamed of myself. 
To talk as an idiot when you are an idiot, 
brings no discomfort ; to behave as an idiot 
when you have sufficient sense to know it, 
is painful. I hide myself in the crowd, and 
perhaps I *ll meet a woman I was introduced 
to three weeks ago at a picture gallery. We 
don't know each other's names, but, both of 



264 On the Motherliness 

us feeling lonesome, we converse, as it is 
called. If she be the ordinary type of 
woman, she asks me if I am going on to the 
Johnsons'. I tell her no. We stand silent 
for a moment, both thinking what next to 
say. She asks me if I was at the Thompsons* 
the day before yesterday. I again tell her 
no. I begin to feel dissatisfied with myself 
that 1 was not at the Thompsons*. Trying 
to get even with her, I ask her if she is going 
to the Browns* next Monday. (There are 
no Browns ; she will have to say, No.) She 
is not, and her tone suggests that a social 
stigma rests upon the Browns. I ask her if 
she has been to Barnum's Circus; she has n*t, 
but is going. I give her my impressions of 
Barnum's Circus, which are precisely the 
impressions of everybody else who has seen 
the show. 

" Or if luck be against me, she is possibly 
a smart woman ; that is to say, her conversa- 
tion is a running fire of spiteful remarks 
at the expense of every one she knows, and 
of sneers at the expense of every one she 
does n't. I always feel T could make a bet- 
ter woman myself, out of a bottle of vine- 
gar and a penn'orth of mixed pins. Yet it 



of Man 265 

usually takes one about ten minutes to get 
away from her. 

" Even when, by chance, one meets a 
flesh-and-blood man or woman at such gath- 
erings, it is not the time nor place for real 
conversation ; and as for the shadows, what 
person in their senses would exhaust a single 
brain cell upon such ? I remember a discus- 
sion once concerning Tennyson, considered 
as a social item. The dullest and most 
densely-stupid bore I ever came across was 
telling how he had sat next to Tennyson at 
dinner. ' I found him a most uninteresting 
man,* so he confided to us ; ' he had noth- 
ing to say for himself — absolutely nothing.* 
I should like to resuscitate Dr. Samuel 
Johnson for an evening, and throw him into 
one of these ' At Homes * of yours.'* 

My friend is an admitted misanthrope, as 
I have explained ; but one cannot dismiss 
him as altogether unjust. That there is a 
certain mystery about Society's craving for 
Society must be admitted. I stood one 
evening trying to force my way into the 
supper-room of a house in Berkeley Square. 
A lady, hot and weary, a few yards in front 
of me, was struggling to the same goal. 



2 66 On the Motherliness 

" Why/' remarked she to her companion, 
" why do we come to these places, and fight 
like a Bank Holiday crowd for eighteen- 
pennyworth of food ? " 

" We come here," replied the man, whom 
I judged to be a philosopher, " to say we 've 
been here." 

I met A the other evening, and asked 

him to dine with me on Monday. I don't 

know why I ask A to dine with me, 

but about once a month I do. He is an 
uninteresting man. 

" I can't," he said ; " I 've got to go to the 

B s'. Confounded nuisance ; it will be 

infernally dull." 

« Why go ? " I asked. 

" I really don't know," he replied. 

A little later B met me, and asked me 

to dine with him on Monday. 

" I can't," I answered ; " some friends are 
coming to us that evening. It 's a duty 
dinner ; you know the sort of thing." . 

" I wish you could have managed it," he 
said ; " I shall have no one to talk to. The 

A s are coming, and they bore me to 

death." 

" Why do you ask them .? " I suggested. 



of Man 267 

" Upon my word, I really don*t know," 
he replied. 

But to return to our rooks. We were 
speaking of their social instincts. Some 
dozen of them — the " scallawags " and 
bachelors of the community, I judge them 
to be — have started a Club. For a month 
past I have been trying to understand what 
the affair was. Now I know : it is a Club. 

And for their Club House they have 
chosen, of course, the tree nearest my bed- 
room window. I can guess how that came 
about ; it was my own fault, I never thought 
of it. About two months ago, a single rook 
— suffering from indigestion or an unhappy 
marriage, I know not — chose this tree one 
night for purposes of reflection. He woke 
me up ; I felt angry. I opened the window 
and threw an empty soda-water bottle at 
him. Of course it did not hit him, and, 
finding nothing else to throw, I shouted at 
him, thinking to frighten him away. He 
took no notice, but went on talking to him- 
self I shouted louder, and woke up my 
own dog. The dog barked furiously, and 
woke up most things within a quarter of a 
mile. I had to go down with a boot-jack 



2 68 On the Motherliness 

— the only thing I could find handy — to 
soothe the dog. Two hours later I fell 
asleep from exhaustion. I left the rook 
still cawing. 

The next night he came again. I should 
say he was a bird with a sense of humour. 
Thinking this might happen, I had, how- 
ever, taken the precaution to have a few 
stones ready. I opened the window wide 
and fired them one after another into the 
tree. After I had closed the window, he 
hopped down nearer and cawed louder than 
ever. I think he wanted me to throw more 
stones at him ; he appeared to regard the 
whole proceeding as a game. On the third 
night, as I heard nothing of him, I flattered 
myself that, in spite of his bravado, I had 
discouraged him. I might have known 
rooks better. 

What happened when the Club was being 
formed, I take it, was this : — 

" Where shall we fix upon for our Club 
House ? " said the Secretary, all other points 
having been disposed of One suggested 
this tree ; another suggested that. Then up 
spoke this particular rook : — 

" I '11 tell you where," said he : " in the 



of Man 269 

yew-tree opposite the porch. And I *11 tell you 
for why. Just about an hour before dawn 
a man comes to the window over the porch, 
dressed in the most comical costume you 
ever set eyes upon. I '11 tell you what he 
reminds me of, — those little statues that 
men use for decorating fields. He opens 
the window, and throws a lot of things out 
upon the lawn, and then he dances and sings. 
It 's awfully interesting, and you can see it 
all from the yew-tree." 

That, I am convinced, is how the Club 
came to fix upon the tree next my window. 
I have had the satisfaction of denying them 
the exhibition they anticipated, and I cheer 
myself with the hope that they have visited 
their disappointment upon their misleader. 

There is a difference between Rook Clubs 
and ours. In our clubs the respectable 
members arrive early, and leave at a reason- 
able hour ; in Rook Clubs, it would appear, 
this principle is reversed. The Mad Hatter 
would have liked this Club ; it would have 
been a club after his own heart. It opens at 
half-past two in the morning, and the first to 
arrive are the most disreputable members. 
In Rook-land the rowdy-dowdy, randy- 



270 On the Motherliness 

dandy, rollicky-ranky boys get up very early 
in the morning and go to bed in the after- 
noon. Towards dawn, the older, more 
orderly members drop in for reasonable 
talk, and the Club becomes more respectable. 
The tree closes about six. For the first two 
hours, however, the goings on are disgrace- 
ful. The proceedings, as often as not, open 
with a fight. If no two gentlemen can be 
found to oblige with a fight, the next noisiest 
thing to fall back upon is held to be a song. 
It is no satisfaction to me to be told that 
rooks cannot sing. / know that, without 
the trouble of referring to the natural history 
book. It is the rook who does not know 
it ; he thinks he can ; and as a matter of 
fact, he does. You can criticise his singing ; 
you can call it what you like, but you can't 
stop it, — at least, that is my experience. 
The song selected is sure to be one with a 
chorus. Towards the end it becomes mainly 
chorus, unless the soloist be an extra power- 
ful bird, determined to insist upon his rights. 
The President knows nothing of this Club. 
He gets up himself about seven — three 
hours after all the others have finished break- 
fast — and then fusses round under the im- 



of Man 271 

pression that he is waking up the colony, 
the fat-headed old fool. He is the poorest 
thing in Presidents I have ever heard of A 
South American Republic would supply a 
better article. The rooks themselves, the 
married majority, fathers of families, respect- 
able nest-holders, are as indignant as I am. 
I hear complaints from all quarters. 

Reflection comes to one as, towards the 
close of these chill afternoons in early spring, 
one leans upon the paddock gate watching 
the noisy bustling in the bare elms. 

So the earth is growing green again, and 
love is come again unto the hearts of us old 
sober-coated fellows. Oh, Madam, your 
feathers gleam wondrous black, and your 
bonnie bright eye stabs deep. Come, sit by 
our side, and we *11 tell you a tale such as 
rook never told before. It*s the tale of a 
nest in a topmost bough, that sways in the 
good west wind. It's strong without, but 
it *s soft within, where the little green eggs 
lie safe. And there sits in that nest a lady 
sweet, and she caws with joy, for afar she 
sees the rook she loves the best. Oh, he 
has been east, and he has been west, and his 
crop it is full of worms and slugs, and they 
are all for her. 



272 On the Motherliness 

We are old, old rooks, so many of us. 
The white is mingling with the purple black 
upon our breasts. We have seen these tall 
elms grow from saplings ; we have seen the 
old trees fall and die. Yet each season come 
to us again the young thoughts. So we mate 
and build and gather, that again our old, old 
hearts may quiver to the thin cry of our 
newborn. 

Mother Nature has but one care, the chil- 
dren. We talk of Love as the Lord of Life ; 
it is but the Minister. Our novels end where 
Nature*s tale begins. The drama that our 
curtain falls upon is but the prologue to her 
play. How the ancient Dame must laugh 
as she listens to the prattle of her children: 
" Is Marriage a Failure ? " " Is Life worth 
Living ? '* " The New Woman versus the 
Old." So, perhaps, the waves of the Atlan- 
tic discuss vehemently whether they shall 
flow east or west. 

Motherhood is the law of the universe. 
The whole duty of man is to be a mother. 
We labour ; to what end ? The children, — 
the woman in the home, the man in the 
community. The nation takes thought for 
its future ; why ? In a few years its states- 



of Man 273 

men, Its soldiers, its merchants, Its toilers, 
will be gathered unto their fathers. Why- 
trouble we ourselves about the future ? The 
country pours its blood and treasure Into the 
earth that the children may reap. Foolish 
Jacques Bonhomie, his addled brain full of 
the maddest dreams, rushes with bloody hands 
to give his blood for Liberty, Equality, Fra- 
ternity. He will not live to see, except in 
vision, the new world he gives his bones to 
build — even his spinning word-whipped 
head knows that. But the children ! they 
shall live sweeter lives. The peasant leaves 
his fireside to die upon the battlefield. 
What Is it to him, a grain in the human 
sand, that Russia should conquer the East, 
that Germany should be united, that the 
English flag should wave above new lands ? 
the heritage his fathers left him shall be 
greater for his sons. Patriotism ! what is it, 
but the mother instinct of a people ? 

Take it that the decree has gone forth 
from Heaven, There shall be no more gene- 
rations ; with this life the world shall die. 
Think you we should move another hand ? 
The ships would rot in the harbours; the grain 

would rot in the ground. Should we paint 
18 



2 74 ^^ ^^^ Motherliness 

pictures, write books, make music ? hemmed 
in by that onward creeping sea of silence. 
Think you with what eyes husband and wife 
would look on one another ? Think you of 
the wooing, — the spring of Love dried up ; 
love only a pool of stagnant water. 

How little we seem to realise this founda- 
tion of our life ! Herein, if nowhere else, 
lies our eternity. This Ego shall never die, 
— unless the human race from beginning to 
end be but a passing jest of the Gods, to be 
swept aside when wearied of, leaving room 
for new experiments. These features of 
mine — we will not discuss their aesthetic 
value — shall never disappear ; modified, 
varied, but in essential the same, they shall 
continue in ever-increasing circles to the end 
of Time. This temperament of mine — this 
good and evil that is in me — it shall grow 
with every age, spreading ever wider, com- 
bining, amalgamating. I go into my children 
and my children's children ; I am eternal. 
I am they ; they are I. The tree withers, 
and you clear the ground, thankful if out of 
its dead limbs you can make good firewood ; 
but its spirit, its life, is in fifty saplings. 
The tree never dies ; it changes. 



of Man 275 

These men and women that pass me in 
the street, this one hurrying to his office, 
this one to his club, another to his love, they 
are the mothers of the world to come. 

This greedy trickster in stocks and shares, 
he cheats, he lies, he wrongs all men — for 
what ? Follow him to his luxurious home 
in the suburbs : what do you find ? A man 
with children on his knee, telling them 
stories, promising them toys. His anxious, 
sordid life, for what object is it lived ? That 
these children may possess the things that 
he thinks good for them. Our very vices, 
side by side with our virtues, spring from 
this one root Motherhood. It is the one 
seed of the universe. The planets are but 
children of the sun, the moon but an off- 
spring of the earth, stone of her stone, iron 
of her iron. What is the Great Centre of 
us all, life animate and inanimate — if any 
life he inanimate ? Is the eternal universe 
one dim figure. Motherhood filling all space? 

This scheming Mother of Mayfair, ang- 
ling for a rich son-in-law ! Not a pleasing 
portrait to look upon, from one point of 
view. Let us look at it, for a moment, from 
another. How weary she must be ! This 



276 On the Motherliness 

is her third " function " to-night ; the paint 
is running off her poor parched face. She 
has been snubbed a dozen times by her 
social superiors, openly insulted by a 
Duchess ; yet she bears it with a patient 
smile. It is a pitiful ambition, hers : it is 
that her child shall marry money, shall have 
carriages and many servants, live in Park 
Lane, wear diamonds, see her name in the 
Society papers. At whatever cost to her- 
self, her daughter shall, if possible, enjoy 
these things. She could so much more 
comfortably go to bed, and leave the 
child to marry some well-to-do commercial 
traveller. Justice, Reader, even for such. 
Her sordid scheming is but the deformed 
child of Motherhood. 

Motherhood ! it is the gamut of God*s 
orchestra, — savageness and cruelty at the 
one end, tenderness and self-sacrifice at the 
other. 

The sparrow-hawk fights the hen, — he 
seeking food for his brood, she defending 
hers with her life. The spider sucks the fly 
to feed its myriad young ; the cat tortures 
the mouse to give its still throbbing carcass 
to her kittens, and man wrongs man for 



of Man 277 

children's sake. Perhaps when the riot of 
the world reaches us whole, not broken, we 
shall learn it is a harmony, each jangling 
discord fallen into its place around the 
central theme, Motherhood. 



ON THE INADVISABILITY OF 
FOLLOWING ADVICE 



I WAS pacing the Euston platform late 
one winter's night, waiting for the 
last train to Watford, when I noticed a man 
cursing an automatic machine. Twice he 
shook his fist at it. I expected every mo- 
ment to see him strike it. Naturally curious, 
I drew near softly. I wanted to catch what 
he was saying. However, he heard my 
approaching footsteps and turned on me. 

" Are you the man,'* said he, " who was 
here just now ? '* 

" Just where ? " I replied. I had been 
pacing up and down the platform for about 
five minutes. 

" Why, here, where we are standing," he 
snapped out. " Where do you think * here ' 
is, — over there ? " He seemed irritable. 

" I may have passed this spot in the course 
of my peregrinations, if that is what you 



Following Advice 279 

mean," I replied. I spoke with studied 
politeness ; my idea was to rebuke his 
rudeness. 

" I mean/' he answered, " are you the man 
that spoke to me, just a minute ago ? " 

" I am not that man," I said ; " good- 
night." 

" Are you sure ? " he persisted. 

" One is not likely to forget talking to 
you," I retorted. 

His tone had been most offensive. " I 
beg your pardon," he replied grudgingly. 
" I thought you looked like the man who 
spoke to me a minute or so ago." 

I felt mollified ; he was the only other 
man on the platform, and I had a quarter of 
an hour to wait. "No, it certainly wasn't 
me," I returned genially, but ungrammati- 
cally. " Why, did you want him ? " 

" Yes, I did," he answered. " I put a 
penny in the slot here," he continued, feel- 
ing apparently the need of unburdening 
himself ; " I wanted a box of matches. I 
could n't get anything out, and I was shaking 
the machine, and swearing at it as one does, 
when there came along a man about your 
size, and — you 're sure it was n't you ? " 



2 8o On the Inadvisability of 

"Positive," I again ungrammatically re- 
plied ; " I would tell you, if it had been. 
What did he do ? " 

" Well, he saw what had happened, or 
guessed it. He said, ' They are troublesome 
things, those machines ; they want under- 
standing.' I said, ' They want taking up 
and flinging into the sea ; that 's what they 
want ! ' I was feeling mad because I had n't 
a match about me, and I use a lot. He said, 
* They stick sometimes ; the thing to do is 
to put another penny in ; the weight of the 
first penny is not always suflicient. The 
second penny loosens the drawer and tumbles 
out itself; so that you get your purchase, to- 
gether with your first penny, back again. I 
have often succeeded that way.' Well, it 
seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if 
he had been weaned by an automatic machine, 
and I was sawney enough to listen to him. 
I dropped in what I thought was another 
penny. I have just discovered it was a two- 
shilling piece. The fool was right to a cer- 
tain extent : I have got something out ; I 
have got this." 

He held it towards me ; I looked at it. It 
was a packet of Everton toffee. 



Following Advice 281 

" Two and a penny/' he remarked bitter- 
ly ; " I '11 sell it for a third of what it cost 
me." 

" You have put your money into the 
wrong machine/' I suggested. 

" Well, I know that ! " he answered a 
little crossly, as it seemed to me : he was 
not a nice man ; had there been any one 
else to talk to, I should have left him. " It 
is n't losing the money I mind so much ; it 's 
getting this damn thing that annoys me. If 
I could find that idiot, I 'd ram it down his 
throat." 

We walked to the end of the platform, 
side by side, in silence. 

" There are people like that/' he broke 
out, as we turned, " people who will go 
about giving advice. I '11 be getting six 
months over one of them, I 'm always afraid. 
I remember a pony I had once." ( I judged 
the man to be a small farmer ; he talked in 
a wurzelly tone. I don't know if you under- 
stand what I mean, but an atmosphere of 
wurzels was the thing that somehow he sug- 
gested.) "It was a thorough-bred Welsh 
pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped. 
I *d had him out to grass all the winter, and 



282 On the Inadvisability of 

one day in the early spring, I thought I *d 
take him for a run. I had to go to Amer- 
sham on business. I put him into the cart, 
and drove him across ; it is just ten miles 
from my place. He was a bit uppish, and 
had lathered himself pretty freely by the 
time we reached the town. 

" A man was at the door of the hotel. 
He says, ' That 's a good pony of yours.' 

"' Pretty middling,* I says. 

" ' It does n't do to overdrive *em when 
they 're young,' he says. 

" I says, ' He 's done ten miles, and I Ve 
done most of the pulHng. I reckon I 'm a 
jolly sight more exhausted than he is.' 

" I went inside and did my business, and 
when I came out the man was still there. 
' Going back up the hill ? ' he says to me. 

" Somehow I did n't cotton to him from 
the beginning. ' Well, I Ve got to get the 
other side of it,' I says ; ' and unless you 
know any patent way of getting over a hill 
without going up it, I reckon I am.' 

" He says, ' You take my advice : give 
him a pint of old ale before you start.' 

" ' Old ale,' I says ; * why, he 's a teeto- 
taler.' 



Following Advice 283 

" ' Never you mind that/ he answers ; 
' you give him a pint of old ale. I know 
these ponies ; he 's a good 'un, but he ain't 
set. A pint of old ale, and he '11 take you 
up that hill like a cable tramway, and not 
hurt himself 

" I don't know what it is about this class 
of man. One asks oneself afterwards why 
one did n't knock his hat over his eyes and 
run his head into the nearest horse-trough. 
But at the time one listens to them. I got 
a pint of old ale in a hand bowl, and brought 
it out. About half-a-dozen chaps were 
standing round, and of course there was a 
good deal of chaff. 

" ' You 're starting him on the downward 
course, Jim,' says one of them. ' He '11 
take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder 
his mother. That 's always the result of a 
glass of ale, 'cording to the tracts.' 

" ' He won't drink it hke that,' says an- 
other ; 'it's as flat as ditch water. Put a 
head on it for him.' 

"'Ain't you got a cigar for him ^ ' says a 
third. 

" ' A cup of coffee and a round of buttered 
toast would do him a sight more good, a 
cold day like this,' says a fourth. 



284 On the Inadvisability of 

" I *d half a mind then to throw the stuff 
away, or drink it myself; it seemed a piece 
of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a four- 
year-old pony ; but the moment the beggar 
smelt the bowl he reached out his head, and 
lapped it up as though he 'd been a Chris- 
tian ; and I jumped into the cart and started 
off, amid cheers. We got up the hill pretty 
steady. Then the liquor began to work 
into his head. I Ve taken home a drunken 
man more than once ; and there 's pleas- 
anter jobs than that. I Ve seen a drunken 
woman, and they 're worse. But a drunken 
Welsh pony I never want to have anything 
more to do with so long as I live. Having 
four legs, he managed to hold himself up; 
but as to guiding himself, he could n*t ; and 
as for letting me do it, he would n*t. First 
we were one side of the road, and then we 
were the other. When we were not either 
side, we were crossways in the middle. I 
heard a bicycle bell behind me, but I dared 
not turn my head. All I could do was to 
shout to the fellow to keep where he was. 

" ^ I want to pass you,' he sang out, so 
soon as he was near enough. 

" ' Well, you can t do it,' I called back. 



Following Advice 285 

"'Why can't I?' he answered. 'How 
much of the road do you want ? ' 

" ' All of it, and a bit over/ I answered 
him, 'for this job, and nothing in the way/ 

" He followed me for half a mile, abusing 
me ; and every time he thought he saw a 
chance he tried to pass me. But the pony 
was always a bit too smart for him. You 
might have thought the brute was doing it 
on purpose. 

"'You're not fit to be driving,' he 
shouted. He was quite right ; I was n't. I 
was feeling just about dead beat. 

"'What do you think you are,' he con- 
tinued, — ' a musical ride ? ' (He was a com- 
mon sort of fellow.) 'Who sent you home 
with the washing ? ' 

" Well, he was making me wild by this 
time. 'What 's the good of talking to me ? ' 
I shouted back. ' Come and blackguard 
the pony if you want to blackguard any- 
body. I've got all I can do without the 
help of that alarm clock of yours. Go 
away ; you 're only making him worse.' 

" ' What's the matter with the pony ? ' he 
called out. 

" ' Can't you see ? ' I answered. 'He 's 
drunk.' 



286 On the Inadvisability of 

" Well, of course it sounded foolish ; the 
truth often does. 

" ' One of you 's drunk/ he retorted ; ' for 
two pins I 'd come and haul you out of the 
cart.' 

" I wish to goodness he had ! I *d have 
given something to be out of that cart. But 
he did n't have the chance. At that moment 
the pony gave a sudden swerve ; and I take it 
he must have been a bit too close. I heard 
a yell and a curse, and at the same instant 
I was splashed from head to foot with ditch- 
water. Then the brute bolted. A man was 
coming along, asleep on the top of a cart- 
load of Windsor chairs. It's disgraceful the 
way those waggoners go to sleep ; I wonder 
there are not more accidents. I don't think 
he ever knew what had happened to him. I 
could n't look round to see what became of 
him ; I only saw him start. Halfway down 
the hill a policeman holla'd to me to stop ; I 
heard him shouting out something about 
furious driving. Half a mile this side of 
Chesham we came upon a girl's school walk- 
ing two and two, — a ' crocodile,' they call it, 
I think. I bet you those girls are still talk- 
ing about it. It must have taken the old 



Following Advice 287 

woman a good hour to collect them together 
again. 

" It was market day in Chesham ; and I 
guess there has not been a busier market- 
day in Chesham before or since. We went 
through the town at about thirty miles an 
hour. I Ve never seen Chesham so lively, 
it 's a sleepy hole as a rule. A mile outside 
the town I sighted the High Wycombe 
coach. I didn't feel I minded much; I 
had got to that pass when it did n't seem to 
matter to me what happened; I only felt 
curious. A dozen yards off the coach, the 
pony stopped dead ; that jerked me off the 
seat to the bottom of the cart. I couldn't 
get up because the seat was on top of me. 
I could see nothing but the sky, and occa- 
sionally the head of the pony, when he stood 
upon his hind legs. But I could hear what 
the driver of the coach said, and I judged he 
was having trouble also. 

" ' Take that damn circus out of the road,' 
he shouted. If he'd had any sense, he'd 
have seen how helpless I was. I could hear 
his cattle plunging about; they are like that, 
horses, — if they see one fool, then they all 
want to be fools. 



288 On the Inadvisability of 

" ' Take it home, and tie it up to its 
organ/ shouted the guard. 

" Then an old woman went into hy- 
sterics, and began laughing like an hyena. 
That started the pony off again, and, as 
far as I could calculate by watching the 
clouds, we did about another four miles at 
the gallop. Then he thought he *d try to 
jump a gate, and finding, I suppose, that 
the cart hampered him, he started kicking it 
to pieces. I *d never have thought a cart 
could have been separated into so many 
pieces, if I hadn't seen it done. When 
he had got rid of everything but half a wheel 
and the splashboard he bolted again. I re- 
mained behind with the other ruins, and glad 
I was to get a little rest. He came back 
later in the afternoon, and I was pleased to 
sell him the next week for a five-pound 
note : it cost me about another ten to repair 
myself 

" To this day, I am chaffed about that 
pony, and the local temperance Society made 
a lecture out of me. That 's what comes of 
following advice." 

I sympathised with him. I have suffered 
from advice myself I have a friend, a City 



Following Advice 289 

man, whom I meet occasionally. One of his 
most ardent passions in life is to make my 
fortune. He button-holes me in Thread- 
needle Street. " The very man I wanted to 
see," he says ; " I 'm going to let you in for 
a good thing. We are getting up a little 
syndicate." He is for ever " getting up " a 
little syndicate; and for every hundred 
pounds you put into it you take a thousand 
out. Had I gone into all his little syndi- 
cates, I could have been worth at the pres- 
ent moment, I reckon, two million five hun- 
dred thousand pounds. But I have not 
gone into all his little syndicates. I went 
into one years ago, when I was younger. 
I am still in it ; my friend is confident that 
my holding, later on, will yield me thou- 
sands. Being, however, hard up for ready 
money, I am willing to part with my share to 
any deserving person at a genuine reduction, 
upon a cash basis. Another friend of mine 
knows another man who is " in the know " 
as regards racing matters. I suppose most 
people possess a friend of this type. He is 
generally very popular just before a race, and 
extremely unpopular immediately afterwards. 
A third benefactor of mine is an enthusiast 
19 



2 go On the Inadvisability of 

upon the subject of diet. One day he 
brought me something in a packet, and 
pressed it into my hand with the air of a 
man who is relieving you of all your 
troubles. 

" What is it ? " I asked. 

" Open it and see," he answered in the 
tone of a pantomime fairy. 

I opened it and looked, but I was no 
wiser. 

" It 's tea," he explained. 

" Oh ! " I replied ; " I was wondering if it 
could be snuff." 

" Well, it *s not exactly tea," he contin- 
ued ; " it 's a sort of tea. You take one cup 
of that, one cup, and you will never care 
for any other kind of tea again." 

He was quite right. I took one cup. 
After drinking it I felt I did n't care for any 
other tea. I felt I did n't care for anything, 
except to die quietly and inoffensively. He 
called on me a week later. 

" You remember that tea I gave you ? " he 
said. 

" Distinctly," I answered ; " I Ve got the 
taste of it in my mouth now." 

" Did it upset you ? " he asked. 



Following Advice 291 

" It annoyed me at the time," I answered ; 
" but that *s all over now." 

He seemed thoughtful. " You were quite 
correct," he answered ; " it was snufF, a very 
special snuff, sent me all the way from India." 

" I can*t say I liked it," I replied. 

" A stupid mistake of mine," he went on : 
" I must have mixed up the packets." 

" Oh, accidents will happen," I said ; " and 
you won't make another mistake, I feel sure, 
so far as I am concerned." 

We can all give advice. I had the honour 
once of serving an old gentleman whose pro- 
fession it was to give legal advice, and excel- 
lent legal advice he always gave. In common 
with most men who know the law, he had 
little respect for it. I have heard him say 
to a would-be litigant : — 

" My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in 
the street and demanded of me my watch 
and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. 
If he thereupon said, ' Then I shall take it 
from you by brute force,' I should, old as 
I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, ' Come 
on.' But if, on the other hand, he were to 
say to me, ' Very well, then I shall take pro- 
ceedings against you in the Court of Queen's 



292 On the Inadvisability of 

Bench to compel you to give it up to me/ 
I should at once take it from my pocket, 
press it into his hand, and beg of him to say 
no more about the matter. And I should 
consider I was getting off cheaply." 

Yet that same old gentleman went to law 
himself with his next-door neighbour over 
a dead poll parrot that was n*t worth six- 
pence to anybody, and spent from first to 
last a hundred pounds, if he spent a penny. 

" I know I 'm a fool," he confessed. " I 
have no positive proof that it was his cat ; 
but I *11 make him pay for calling me an old 
Bailey Attorney, damned if I don't ! " 

We all know how the pudding ought to 
be made. We do not profess to be able to 
make it. That is not our business ; our 
business is to criticise the cook. It seems our 
business to criticise so many things that it is 
not our business to do. We are all critics 
nowadays. I have my opinion of you. 
Reader, and you possibly have your own 
opinion of me. I do not seek to know it ; 
personally, I prefer the man who says what 
he has to say of me behind my back. I re- 
member, when on a lecturing tour, the ground 
plan. of the Hall often necessitated my min- 



Following Advice 293 

gling with the audience as they streamed 
out. This never happened but I would 
overhear somebody in front of me whisper 
to his or her companion : " Take care ; he 's 
just behind you." I always felt so grateful 
to that whisperer. 

At a Bohemian Club, I was once drinking 
coffee with a Novelist, who happened to be 
a broad-shouldered, athletic man. A fellow- 
member, joining us, said to the Novelist, " I 
have just finished that last book of yours ; 
I '11 tell you my candid opinion of it." 
Promptly replied the Novelist, " I give 
you fair warning : if you do, I shall punch 
your head." We never heard that candid 
opinion. 

Most of our leisure time we spend sneer- 
ing at one another. It is a wonder, going 
about as we do with our noses so high in 
the air, we do not walk off this little round 
world into space, all of us. The Masses 
sneer at the Classes. The morals of the 
Classes are shocking. If only the Classes 
would consent as a body to be taught be- 
haviour by a Committee of the Masses, how 
very much better it would be for them ! If 
only the Classes would neglect their own 



2 94 On the Inadvisability of 



interests and devote themselves to the wel- 
fare of the Masses, the Masses would be 
more pleased with them. 

The Classes sneer at the Masses. If only 
the Masses would follow the advice given 
them by the Classes; if only they would be 
thrifty on their ten shillings a week : if only 
they would all be teetotalers, or drink old 
claret, which is not intoxicating; if only all 
the girls would be domestic servants on five 
pounds a year, and not waste their money 
on feathers ; if only the men would be con- 
tent to work for fourteen hours a day, and 
to sing in tune, " God bless the Squire and 
his relations," and would consent to be kept 
in their proper stations, — all things would go 
swimmingly — for the Classes. 

The New Woman pooh-poohs the old; 
the Old Woman is indignant with the New. 
The Chapel denounces the Stage; the Stage 
ridicules Little Bethel ; the Minor Poet 
sneers at the world; the world laughs at the 
Minor Poet. 

Man criticises Woman. We are not alto- 
gether pleased with woman. We discuss 
her shortcomings ; we advise her for her 
good. If only English wives would dress 



1 



Following Advice 295 

as French wives, talk as American wives, 
cook as German wives, if only women would 
be precisely what we want them to be, — 
patient and hard-working, brilliantly witty 
and exhaustively domestic, bewitching, amen- 
able, and less suspicious, — how very much 
better it would be for them — also for us. We 
work so hard to teach them, but they will 
not listen. Instead of paying attention to 
our wise counsel, the tiresome creatures are 
wasting their time criticising us. It is a 
popular game, this game of school. • All 
that is needful is a doorstep, a cane, and 
six other children. The difficulty is the six 
other children. Every child wants to be the 
schoolmaster ; they will keep jumping up, 
saying it is their turn. 

Woman wants to take the stick now and 
put man on the doorstep. There are one 
or two things she has got to say to him. 
He is not at all the man she approves of. 
He must begin by getting rid of all his 
natural desires and propensities ; that done, 
she will take him in hand and make of 
him, not a man, but something very much 
superior. 

It would be the best of all possible worlds 



296 On the Inadvisability of 

if everybody would only follow our advice. I 
wonder, would Jerusalem have been the 
cleanly city it is reported, if, instead of troub- 
ling himself concerning his own twopenny- 
halfpenny doorstep, each citizen had gone 
out into the road and given eloquent lec- 
tures to all the other inhabitants on the sub- 
ject of sanitation. 

We have taken to criticising the Creator 
Himself of late. The world is wrong ; we 
are wrong. If only He had taken our ad- 
vice during those first six days ! 

Why do I seem to have been scooped out 
and filled up with lead? Why do I hate 
the smell of bacon and feel that nobody 
cares for me? It is because champagne and 
lobsters have been made wrong. 

Why do Edwin and Angelina quarrel ? 
It is because Edwin has been given a fine, 
high-spirited nature that will not brook con- 
tradiction ; while Angelina, poor girl, has 
been cursed with contradictory instincts. 

Why is excellent Mr. Jones brought 
down next door to beggary ? Mr. Jones 
had an income of a thousand a year, secured 
by the Funds. But there came along a 
wicked Company promoter (Why are 



Following Advice 297 

wicked Company promoters permitted ?) with 
a prospectus, telling good Mr. Jones how to 
obtain a hundred per cent for his money by- 
investing it in some scheme for the swind- 
ling of Mr. Jones's fellow-citizens. 

The scheme does not succeed ; the people 
swindled turn out, contrary to the promise 
of the prospectus, to be Mr. Jones and his 
fellow-investors. Why does Heaven allow 
these wrongs ? 

Why does Mrs. Brown leave her husband 
and children, to run off with the New Doc- 
tor? It is because an ill-advised Creator 
has given Mrs. Brown and the New Doctor 
unduly strong emotions. Neither Mrs. 
Brown nor the New Doctor are to be 
blamed. If any human being be answerable 
it is probably Mrs. Brown's grandfather, or 
some early ancestor of the New Doctor's. 

We shall criticise Heaven, when we get 
there. I doubt if any of us will be pleased 
with the arrangements, we have grown so 
exceedingly critical. 

It was once said of a very superior young 
man that he seemed to be under the im- 
pression that God Almighty had made the 
universe chiefly to hear what he would say 



298 On the Inadvisability of 

about it. Consciously or unconsciously, 
most of us are of this way of thinking. It 
is an age of mutual improvement societies, 
— a delightful idea, everybody's business 
being to improve everybody else, — of ama- 
teur parliaments, of literary councils, of 
playgoers* clubs. 

First Night criticism seems to have died 
out of late, the Student of the Drama having 
come to the conclusion, possibly, that plays 
are not worth criticising. But in my young 
days we were very earnest at this work. 
We went to the play less with the selfish 
desire of enjoying our evening than with the 
noble aim of elevating the Stage. Maybe 
we did good, maybe we were needed, — let 
us think so. Certain it is, many of the old 
absurdities have disappeared from the The- 
atre, and our rough-and-ready criticism may 
have helped the happy despatch. A folly is 
often served by an unwise remedy. 

The dramatist in those days had to reckon 
with his audience. Gallery and Pit took an 
interest in his work such as Galleries and 
Pits no longer take. I recollect witnessing 
the production of a very blood-curdling 
melodrama at, I think, the old Queen's 



Following Advice 299 

Theatre. The heroine had been given by 
the author a quite unnecessary amount of 
conversation, so we considered. The woman, 
whenever she appeared on the stage, talked 
by the yard; she could not do a simple little 
thing like cursing the Villain under about 
twenty lines. When the hero asked her if 
she loved him she stood up and made a 
speech about it that lasted three minutes by 
the watch. One dreaded to see her open 
her mouth. In the Third Act, somebody 
got hold of her and shut her up in a dun- 
geon. He was not a nice man, speaking 
generally, but we felt he was the man for the 
situation, and the house cheered him to the 
echo. We flattered ourselves we had got 
rid of her for the rest of the evening. Then 
some fool of a turnkey came along, and she 
appealed to him, through the grating, to let 
her out for a few minutes. The turnkey, a 
good but soft-hearted man, hesitated. 

" Don*t you do it," shouted one earnest 
Student of the Drama, from the gallery; 
"she's all right. Keep her there." 

The old idiot paid no attention to our 
advice ; he argued the matter to himself. 
" 'T is but a trifling request," he remarked ; 
" and it will make her happy." 



300 On the Inadvisability of 






" Yes, but what about us ? " replied the 
same voice from the gallery. " You don't 
know her. You Ve only just come on ; 
we Ve been listening to her all the evening. 
She 's quiet now ; you let her be." 

" Oh, let me out, if only for one moment ! " 
shrieked the poor woman. " I have some- 
thing that I must say to my child." 

" Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it 
out," suggested a voice from the Pit. 
"Well see that he gets it." 

" Shall I keep a mother from her dying 
child ? " mused the turnkey. " No, it would 
be inhuman." 

"No, it wouldn't," persisted the. voice of 
the Pit ; " not in this instance. It 's too 
much talk that has made the poor child ill." 

The turnkey would not be guided by us. 
He opened the cell door amidst the execra- 
tions of the whole house. She talked to 
her child for about five minutes, at the end 
of which time it died. 

" Ah, he is dead ! " shrieked the distressed 
parent. 

" Lucky beggar ! " was the unsympathetic 
rejoinder of the house. 

Sometimes the criticism of the audience 



Following Advice 301 

would take the form of remarks addressed 
by one gentleman to another. We had been 
hstening one night to a play in which action 
seemed to be unnecessarily subordinated to 
dialogue, and somewhat poor dialogue at 
that. Suddenly, across the wearying talk from 
the stage, came the stentorian whisper : — 

"Jim!" 

« Hallo ! " 

" Wake me up when the play begins." 

This was followed by an ostentatious 
sound as of snoring. Then the voice of 
the second speaker was heard: — 

" Sammy ! " 

His friend appeared to awake. 

" Eh ? Yes ? What 's up ? Has any- 
thing happened ? " 

" Wake you up at half-past eleven in any 
event, I suppose ? " 

"Thanks; do, sonny." And the critic 
slept again. 

Yes, we took an interest in our plays then. 
I wonder shall I ever enjoy the British 
Drama again as I enjoyed it in those days ? 
Shall I ever enjoy a supper again as I en- 
joyed the tripe and onions washed down 
with bitter beer at the bar of the old " Al- 



30 2 On the Inadvisability of 

bion " ? I have tried many suppers after 
the theatre since then, and some, when 
friends have been in generous mood, have 
been expensive and elaborate. The cook 
may have come from Paris, his portrait may 
be in the illustrated papers, his salary may 
be reckoned by hundreds ; but there is some- 
thing wrong with his art, for all that I miss 
a flavour in his suppers. There is a sauce 
he has not the secret of 

Nature has her coinage, and demands 
payment in her own currency. At nature's 
shop it is you yourself must pay. Your 
unearned increment, your inherited fortune, 
your luck, are not legal tenders across her 
counter. 

You want a good appetite. Nature is 
quite willing to supply you. " Certainly, 
sir," she replies, " I can do you a very excel- 
lent article indeed. I have here a real genuine 
hunger and thirst that will make your meal 
a delight to you. You shall eat heartily and 
with zest, and you shall rise from the table 
refreshed, invigorated, and cheerful." 

"Just the very thing I want," exclaims 
the gourmet, delightedly. " Tell me the 
price." 



Following Advice 303 

" The price," answers Mrs. Nature, " is 
one long day's hard work.'* 

The customer's face falls ; he handles ner- 
vously his heavy purse. 

" Cannot I pay for it in money ? " he 
asks. " I don't like work, but I am a rich 
man. I can afford to keep French cooks, 
to purchase old wines." 

Nature shakes her head. 

" I cannot take your cheques ; tissue and 
nerve are my charges. For these I can give 
you an appetite that will make a rump steak 
and a tankard of ale more delicious to you 
than any dinner that the greatest chef in 
Europe could put before you. I can even 
promise you that a hunk of bread and cheese 
shall be a banquet to you ; but you must 
pay my price in my money ; I do not deal 
in yours." 

And next the Dilettante enters, demand- 
ing a taste for Art and Literature, and this 
also Nature is quite prepared to supply. 

" I can give you true delight in all these 
things," she answers. " Music shall be as 
wings to you, lifting you above the turmoil 
of the world. Through Art you shall catch 
a glimpse of Truth. Along the pleasant 



304 On the Inadvisability of 

paths of Literature you shall walk as beside 
still waters." 

" And your charge ? " cries the delighted 
customer. 

" These things are somewhat expensive," 
replies Nature. " I want from you a life 
lived simply, free from all desire of worldly 
success, a life from which passion has been 
lived out ; a life to which appetite has been 
subdued." 

" But you mistake, my dear lady," replies 
the Dilettante ; " I have many friends, pos- 
sessed of taste, and they are men who do 
not pay this price for it. Their houses are 
full of beautiful pictures ; they rave about 
' nocturnes ' and ' symphonies ; ' their shelves 
are packed with first editions. Yet they are 
men of luxury and wealth and fashion. 
They trouble much concerning the making 
of money, and Society is their heaven. Can- 
not I be as one of these ? " 

" I do not deal in the tricks of apes," 
answers Nature, coldly; "the culture of 
these friends of yours is a mere pose, a 
fashion of the hour, their talk mere parrot 
chatter. Yes, you can purchase such culture 
as this, and pretty cheaply, but a passion 



Following Advice 305 

for skittles would be of more service to you, 
and bring you more genuine enjoyment. 
My goods are of a different class ; I fear we 
waste each other's time." 

And next there comes the boy, asking 
with a blush for love, and Nature's motherly 
old heart goes out to him, for it is an article 
she loves to sell, and she loves those who 
come to purchase it of her. So she leans 
across the counter, smiling, and tells him 
that she has the very thing he wants, and he, 
trembling with excitement, likewise asks the 
figure. 

" It costs a good deal,*' explains Nature, 
but in no discouraging tone ; " it is the 
most expensive thing in all my shop." 

''I am rich," replies the lad. "My 
father worked hard and saved, and he has 
left me all his wealth. I have stocks and 
shares and lands and factories, and will pay 
any price in reason for this thing." 

But Nature, looking graver, lays her hand 
upon his arm. 

" Put by your purse, boy," she says ; " my 

price is not a price in reason, nor is gold the 

metal that I deal in. There are many shops 

in various streets where your bank-notes 

20 



3o6 On the Inadvisability of 

will be accepted. But if you will take an 
old woman's advice, you will not go to them. 
The thing they will sell you will bring 
sorrow and do evil to you. It is cheap 
enough, but, like all things cheap, it is not 
worth the buying. No man purchases it, 
only the fool." 

" And what is the cost of the thing you 
sell, then ? " asks the lad. 

" Self-forgetfulness, tenderness, strength," 
answers the old Dame ; " the love of all 
things that are of good repute, the hate of 
all things evil : courage, sympathy, self- 
respect, — these things purchase love. Put 
by your purse, lad, it will serve you in 
other ways ; but it will not buy for you the 
goods upon my shelves." 

" Then am I no better off than the poor 
man ? " demands the lad. 

" I know not wealth or poverty as you 
understand it," answers Nature. " Here I 
exchange realities only for realities. You 
ask for my treasures ; I ask for your brain 
and heart in exchange, — yours, boy, not 
your father's, not another's." 

" And this price," he argues, " how shall 
I obtain it ? " 



Following Advice 307 

" Go about the world," replies the great 
Lady. " Labour, suffer, help. Come back 
to me when you have earned your wages, 
and according to how much you bring me 
so we win do business." 

Is real wealth so unevenly distributed as 
we think ? Is not Fate the true Socialist ? 
Who Is the rich man, who the poor ? Do 
we know ? Does even the man himself 
know ? Are we not striving for the shadow, 
missing the substance ? Take life at its 
highest ; which was the happier man, rich 
Solomon or poor Socrates ? Solomon seems 
to have had most things that most men 
most desire — maybe too much of some for 
his own comfort. Socrates had little beyond 
what he carried about with him, but that 
was a good deal. According to our scales, 
Solomon should have been one of the happiest 
men that ever lived, Socrates one of the 
most wretched. But was It so ? 

Or taking life at Its lowest, with pleasure 
its only goal, is my lord Tom Noddy, in 
the stalls, so very much jollier than 'Arry 
in the gallery ? Were beer ten shillings the 
bottle, and champagne fourpence a quart, 
which, think you, we should clamour for ? 



3o8 Following Advice 

If every West End Club had its skittle 
alley, and billiards could only be played in 
East End pubs, which game, my lord, 
would you select ? Is the air of Berkeley 
Square so much more joy-giving than the 
atmosphere of Seven Dials ? I find myself 
a piquancy in the air of Seven Dials, missing 
from Berkeley Square. Is there so vast a 
difference between horse-hair and straw, 
when you are tired ? Is happiness multi- 
plied by the number of rooms in one's 
house ? Are Lady Ermintrude's lips so 
very much sweeter than Sally's of the Alley ? 
What is success in Hfe ? 



ON THE PLAYING OF MARCHES 

AT THE FUNERALS OF 

MARIONETTES 



HE began the day badly. He took me 
out and lost me. It would be so 
much better would he consent to the usual 
arrangement, and allow me to take him out. 
I am far the abler leader ; I say it without 
conceit. I am older than he is, and I am less 
excitable. I do not stop and talk with every 
person I meet, and then forget where I am. 
I do less to distract myself: I rarely fight; 
I never feel I want to run after cats ; I take 
but little pleasure in frightening children. I 
have nothing to think about but the walk 
and the getting home again. If, as I say, 
he would give up taking me out, and let me 
take him out, there would be less trouble all 
round. But into this I have never been 
able to persuade him. 

He had mislaid me once or twice, but 



3IO On Playing of Marches 

in Sloane Square he lost me entirely. 
When he loses me he stands and barks for 
me. If only he would remain where he first 
barked, I might find my way to him ; but 
before I can cross the road, he is barking 
halfway down the next street. I am not so 
young as I was ; and I sometimes think he 
exercises me more than is good for me. I 
could see him from where I was standing in 
the King's road. Evidently he was most 
indignant. I was too far off to distinguish 
the barks, but I could guess what he was 
saying, — 

" Damn that man ! he 's off again." 
He made inquiries of a passing dog, — 
" You have n't smelt my man about any- 
where, have you? " 

(A dog, of course, would never speak of 
seeing anybody or anything, smell being his 
leading sense. Reaching the top of a hill, 
he would say to his companion, " Lovely 
smell from here, I always think ; I could sit 
and sniff here all the afternoon." Or, pro- 
posing a walk, he would say, " I like the 
road by the canal, don't you ? There 's 
something interesting to catch your nose 
at every turn.") 



at Funerals of Marionettes 311 

" No, I have n't smelt any man in par- 
ticular," answered the other dog. " What 
sort of a smelling man is yours ? *' 

" Oh, an egg-and-bacony sort of a man, 
with a dash of soap about him." 

" That 's nothing to go by," retorted the 
other ; " rnost men would answer to that 
description, this time of the morning. Where 
were you when you last noticed him ? " 

At this moment he caught sight of me, 
and came up, pleased to find me, but vexed 
with me for having got lost. 

" Oh, here you are," he barked ; " did n't 
you see me go round the corner ? Do keep 
closer. Bothered if half my time is n't 
taken up finding you and losing you 
again." 

The incident appeared to have made him 
bad-tempered ; he was just in the humour 
for a row of any sort. At the top of Sloane 
Street, a stout military-looking gentleman 
started running after the Chelsea 'bus. With 
a " Hooroo " William Smith was after him. 
Had the old gentleman taken no notice, all 
would have been well. A butcher boy, 
driving just behind, would — I could read 
it in his eye — have caught Smith a flick as 



312 On Playing of Marches 

he darted into the road, which would have 
served him right; the old gentleman would 
have captured his 'bus; and the affair would 
have been ended. Unfortunately, he was 
that type of retired military man all gout 
and curry and no sense. He stopped to 
swear at the dog. That, of course, was 
what Smith wanted. It is not often he 
gets a scrimmage with a full-grown man. 
"They're a poor-spirited lot, most of 
them," he thinks; "they won't even answer 
you back. I like a man who shows a bit 
of pluck." He was frenzied with delight 
at his success. He flew round his victim, 
weaving whooping circles and curves that 
paralysed the old gentleman as though they 
had been the mystic figures of a Merlin. 
The colonel clubbed his umbrella, and 
attempted to defend himself I called to 
the dog, I gave good advice to the colonel 
(I judged him to be a colonel ; the louder 
he spoke, the less one could understand 
him), but both were too excited to listen to 
me. A sympathetic 'bus driver leaned over 
and whispered hoarse counsel. 

" Ketch 'im by the tail, sir," he advised 
the old gentleman ; " don't you be afraid of 
him ; you ketch 'im firmly by the tail." 



at Funerals of Marionettes 313 

A milkman, on the other hand, sought 
rather to encourage Smith, shouting as he 
passed, — 

"Good dog, kill him!" 

A child, brained within an inch by the 
old gentleman's umbrella, began to cry. 
The nurse told the old gentleman he was a 
fool, — a remark which struck me as singu- 
larly apt. The old gentleman gasped back 
that perambulators were illegal on the pave- 
ment, and, between his exercises, inquired 
after myself A crowd began to collect, 
and a policeman strolled up. 

It was not the right thing : I do not de- 
fend myself; but, at this point, the temp- 
tation came to me to desert William Smith. 
He likes a street row; I don't. These 
things are matters of temperament. I have 
also noticed that he has the happy instinct 
of knowing when to disappear from a crisis, 
and the ability to do so; mysteriously turn- 
ing up, quarter of a mile off, clad in a 
peaceful and preoccupied air, and to all 
appearances another and a better dog. 

Consoling myself with the reflection that I 
could be of no practical assistance to him, 
and remembering with some satisfaction that, 



3i4 Oi^ Playing of Marches 

by a fortunate accident, he was without his 
collar, which bears my name and address, I 
slipped round the off side of a Vauxhall *bus, 
making no attempt at ostentation, and worked 
my way home through Lowndes Square and 
the Park. 

Five minutes after I had sat down to 
lunch, he flung open the dining-room door 
and marched in. It is his customary 
" entrance." In a previous state of existence, 
his soul was probably that of an Actor- 
Manager. 

From his exuberant self-satisfaction, I was 
inclined to think he must have succeeded in 
following the milkman's advice ; at all events, 
I have not seen the colonel since. His bad 
temper had disappeared, but his " uppish- 
ness " had, if possible, increased. Previous to 
his return, I had given The O'Shannon a 
biscuit. The O'Shannon had been insulted ; 
he did not want a dog biscuit ; if he could 
not have a grilled kidney he did not want 
anything. He had thrown the biscuit on 
the floor. Smith saw it and made for it. 
Now Smith never eats biscuits. I give him 
one occasionally, and he at once proceeds to 
hide it. He is a thrifty dog ; he thinks of the 



at Funerals of Marionettes 315 

future. " You never know what may hap- 
pen," he says ; "suppose the Guv'nor dies, or 
goes mad, or bankrupt,! may be glad even of 
this biscuit ; I '11 put it under the door-mat 
— no, I won't, somebody will find it there ; 
I '11 scratch a hole in the tennis lawn and 
bury it there. That 's a good idea ; perhaps 
it'll grow." Once I caught him hiding it 
in my study, behind the shelf devoted to 
my own books. It offended me, his doing 
that ; the argument was so palpable. Gen- 
erally, wherever he hides it somebody finds 
it. We find it under our pillows, inside 
our boots ; no place seems safe. This time 
he had said to himself, " By Jove ! a whole 
row of the Guv'nor's books. Nobody will 
ever want to take these out : I '11 hide it 
here." One feels a thing like that from 
one's own dog. 

But The O'Shannon's biscuit was another 
matter. Honesty is the best policy ; but 
dishonesty is the better fun. He made a 
dash for it and commenced to devour it 
greedily ; you might have thought he had 
not tasted food for a week. 

The indignation of The O'Shannon was a 
sight for the gods. He has the good nature 



3i6 On Playing of Marches 

of his race : had Smith asked him for the 
biscuit, he would probably have given it 
to him; it was the insult, the immorality 
of the proceeding, that maddened The 
O'Shannon. 

For a moment he was paralysed. 

"Well, of all the Did ye see that 

now ? " he said to me with his eyes. Then 
he made a rush and snatched the biscuit out 
of Smith's very jaws. " Ye onprincipled 
black Saxon thief," growled The O'Shan- 
non, " how dare ye take my biscuit ? " 

"You miserable Irish cur," growled Smith, 
" how was I to know it was your biscuit ? 
Does everything on the floor belong to you ? 
Perhaps you think I belong to you ; I 'm on 
the floor. I don't believe it is your biscuit, 
you long-eared, snubbed-nosed bog-trotter ; 
give it me back." 

" I don't require any of your argument, 
you flop-eared son of a tramp with half a 
tail," replied The O'Shannon. "You come 
and take it, if you think you are dog 
enough." 

He did think he was dog enough. He is 
half the size of The O'Shannon, but such 
considerations weigh not with him. His 



at Funerals of Marionettes 317 

argument is, if a dog is too big for you to 
fight the whole of him, take a bit of him and 
fight that. He generally gets licked, but 
what is left of him invariably swaggers about 
afterwards under the impression it is the vic- 
tor. When he is dead, he will say to him- 
self, as he settles himself in his grave, 
" Well, I flatter myself I Ve laid out that 
old world at last. It won't trouble me any 
more, I 'm thinking.'* 

On this occasion, / took a hand in the 
fight. It becomes necessary at intervals to 
remind Master Smith that the man, as the 
useful and faithful friend of dog, has his 
rights. I deemed such interval had arrived. 
He flung himself on to the sofa, muttering. 
It sounded like, " Wish I 'd never got up 
this morning. Nobody understands me." 

Nothing, however, sobers him for long. 
Half-an-hour later, he was killing the next- 
door cat. He will never learn sense ; he 
has been killing that cat for the last three 
months. Why the next morning his nose 
is invariably twice its natural size, while for 
the next week he can see objects on one side 
of his head only, he never seems to grasp ; 
I suppose he attributes it to change in the 
weather. 



3i8 On Playing of Marches 

He ended up the afternoon with what he 
no doubt regarded as a complete and satis- 
fying success. Dorothea had invited a lady 
to take tea with her that day. I heard 
the sound of laughter, and, being near the 
nursery, I looked in to see what was the 
joke. Smith was worrying a doll. I have 
rarely seen a more worried-looking doll. Its 
head was off, and its sawdust strewed the 
floor. Both the children were crowing with 
delight ; Dorothea, in particular, was in an 
ecstasy of amusement. 

"Whose doll is it?" I asked. 

" Eva's," answered Dorothea, between her 
peals of laughter. 

" Oh, no, it is n't," explained Eva, in a 
tone of sweet content; "here's my doll." 
She had been sitting on it, and now drew it 
forth, warm but whole. "That's Dorry's 
doll." 

The change from joy to grief on the part 
of Dorothea was distinctly dramatic. Even 
Smith, accustomed to storm, was nonplussed 
at the suddenness of the attack upon him. 

Dorothea's sorrow lasted longer than I 
had expected. I promised her another doll. 
But it seemed she did not want another ; 



at Funerals of Marionettes 319 

that was the only doll she would ever care 
for so long as life lasted ; no other doll 
could ever take its place; no other doll 
would be to her what that doll had been. 
These little people are so absurd: as if it 
could matter whether you loved one doll 
or another, when all are so much alike ! 
They have curly hair and pink-and-white 
complexions, big eyes that open and shut, a 
little red mouth, two little hands. Yet 
these foolish little people ! they will love 
one, while another they will not look upon. 
I find the best plan is not to reason with 
them, but to sympathise. Later on — but 
not too soon — introduce to them another 
doll. They will not care for it at first, but 
in time they will come to take an interest in 
it. Of course it cannot make them forget 
the first doll; no doll ever born in Lowther 

Arcadia could be as that, but still It 

is many weeks before they forget entirely 
the first love. 

We buried Dolly in the country under 
the yew-tree. A friend of mine who plays 
the fiddle came down on purpose to assist. 
We buried her in the hot spring sunshine, 
while the birds from shady nooks sang joy- 



3 20 On Playing of Marches 

ously of life and love. And our chief 
mourner cried real tears, just for all the 
world as though it were not the fate of dolls, 
sooner or later, to get broken, — the little 
fragile things, made for an hour, to be 
dressed and kissed ; then, paintless and 
stript, to be thrown aside on the nursery- 
floor. Poor little dolls ! I wonder do they 
take themselves seriously, not knowing the 
springs that stir their sawdust bosoms are 
but clockwork, not seeing the wires to which 
they dance. Poor little marionettes ! do they 
talk together, I wonder, when the lights of 
the booth are out. 

You, little sister doll, were the heroine. 
You lived in the whitewashed cottage, all 
honeysuckle and clematis without, — ear- 
wiggy and damp within, maybe. How pretty 
you always looked in your simple, neatly- 
fitting print dress ! How good you were ! 
How nobly you bore your poverty ! How 
patient you were under your many wrongs ! 
You never harboured an evil thought, a 
revengeful wish — never, little doll ? Were 
there never moments when you longed to 
play the wicked woman*s part, live in a room 
with many doors, beclad in furs and jewels. 



at Funerals of Marionettes 321 

with lovers galore at your feet ? In those 
long winter evenings ? the household work 
is done, — the greasy dishes washed, the 
floor scrubbed ; the excellent child is asleep 
in the corner ; the one-and-eleven-penny 
lamp sheds its dismal light on the darned 
table-cloth ; you sit, busy at your coarse 
sewing, waiting for Hero Dick, knowing, 

guessing, at least, where he is ! Yes, 

dear, I remember your fine speeches, when 
you told her, in stirring language the gallery 
cheered to the echo, what you thought of her 
and of such women as she ; when, lifting your 
hand to Heaven, you declared you were 
happier in your attic, working your fingers 
to the bone, than she in her gilded salon — 
I think " gilded salon " was the term, was it 
not? — furnished by sin. But speaking of 
yourself, weak little sister doll, not of your 
fine speeches, the gallery listening, did you 
not in your secret heart envy her? Did 
you never, before blowing out the one candle, 
stand for a minute in front of the cracked 
glass, and think to yourself that you, too, 
would look well in low-cut dresses from 
Paris, the diamonds flashing on your white 
smooth skin ? Did you never, toiling home 



21 



3 2 2 On Playing of Marches 

through the mud, bearing your bundle of 
needlework, feel bitter with the wages of 
virtue, as she splashed you, passing by in 
her carriage ? Alone, over your cup of 
weak tea, did you never feel tempted to pay 
the price for champagne suppers and gaiety 
and admiration ? Ah, yes, it is easy for 
folks who have had their good time to pre- 
pare copy-books for weary little ink-stained 
fingers longing for play. The fine maxims 
sound such cant when we are in that mood, 
do they not ? You, too, were young and 
handsome : did the author of the play think 
you were never hungry for the good things 
of life ? Did he think that reading tracts to 
crotchety old women was joy to a full- 
blooded girl in her twenties ? Why should she 
have all the love and all the laughter ? How 
fortunate that the villain, the Wicked Baro- 
net, never opened the cottage door at that 
moment, eh, dear? He always came when 
you were strong, when you felt that you 
could denounce him, and scorn his tempta- 
tions. Would that the villain came to all of 
us at such time ; then we would all, perhaps, 
be heroes and heroines. 

Ah, well, it was only a play : it is over 



at Funerals of Marionettes 323 

now. You and I, little tired dolls, lying 
here side by side, waiting to know our next 
part, we can look back and laugh. Where 
is she, this wicked dolly, that made such a 
stir on our tiny stage ? Ah, here you are. 
Madam ; I thought you could not be far ; 
they have thrown us all into this corner to- 
gether. But how changed you are, Dolly, 
your paint rubbed off, your golden hair worn 
to a wisp ! No wonder ; it was a trying part 
you had to play. How tired you must have 
grown of the glare and the glitter ! And 
even hope was denied you. The peace you 
so longed for you knew you had lost the 
power to enjoy. Like the girl bewitched in 
the fairy tale, you knew you must dance ever 
faster and faster, with limbs growing palsied, 
with face growing ashen and hair growing 
grey, till Death should come to release you ; 
and your only prayer was he might come ere 
your dancing grew comic. 

Like the smell of the roses to Nancy, 
hawking them through the hot streets, must 
the stifling atmosphere of love have been to 
you. The song of passion, how monotonous 
in your ears, sung now by the young and 
now by the old ; now shouted, now whined, 



324 On Playing of Marches 

now shrieked ; but ever the one strident 
tune. Do you remember when first you 
heard it ? You dreamt it the morning hymn 
of Heaven. You came to think it the dance- 
music of Hell, ground out of a cracked 
hurdy-gurdy, lent out by the Devil on hire. 

An evil race we must have seemed to you, 
Dolly Faustine, as to some Old Bailey lawyer. 
You saw but one side of us. You lived in 
a world upside down, where the leaves and 
the blossoms were hidden, and only the roots 
saw your day. You imagined the worm- 
beslimed fibres the plant, and all things 
beautiful you deemed cant. Chivalry, love, 
honour ! how you laughed at the lying words ! 
You knew the truth — as you thought : aye, 
half the truth. We were swine while your 
spell was upon us. Daughter of Circe, and 
you, not knowing your island secret, deemed 
it our natural shape. 

No wonder, Dolly, your battered waxen 
face is stamped with an angry sneer. The 
Hero, who eventually came into his estates 
amid the plaudits of the Pit, while you were 
left to die in the streets, you remembered, 
but the house had forgotten those earlier 
scenes in always wicked Paris. The good 



at Funerals of Marionettes 325 

friend of the family, the breezy man of the 
world, the Deus ex Machina of the play, who 
was so good to everybody, whom everybody 
loved ! aye, you loved him once — but that 
was in the Prologue. In the Play proper, 
he was respectable. (How you loathed that 
word, that meant to you all you vainly 
longed for !) To him the Prologue was a 
period past and dead ; a memory, giving 
flavour to his life. To you, it was the First 
Act of the Play, shaping all the others. 
His sins the house had forgotten ; at yours, 
they held up their hands in horror. No 
wonder the sneer lies on your waxen lips. 

Never mind, Dolly; it was a stupid house. 
Next time, perhaps, you will play a better 
part; and then they will cheer, instead of 
hissing you. You were wasted, I am in- 
clined to think, on modern comedy. You 
should have been cast for the heroine of 
some old-world tragedy. The strength of 
character, the courage, the power of self- 
forge tfulness, the enthusiasm, were yours : it 
was the part that was lacking. You might 
have worn the mantle of a Judith, a Boadi- 
cea, or a Jeanne d'Arc, had such plays been 



326 On Playing of Marches 

popular in your time. Perhaps they, had 
they played in your day, might have had to 
be content with such a part as yours. They 
could not have played the meek heroine, 
and what else would there have been for 
them in modern drama? Catherine of 
Russia ! had she been a waiter's daughter in 
the days of the Second Empire, should we 
have called her Great ? The Magdalene ! 
had her lodging in those days been in some 
bye-street of Rome instead of in Jerusa- 
lem, should we mention her name in our 
churches ? 

You were necessary, you see, Dolly, to 
the piece. We cannot all play heroes and 
heroines. There must be wicked people in 
the play, or it would not interest. Think 
of it, Dolly, a play where all the women 
were virtuous, all the men honest! We 
might close the booth ; the world would be 
as dull as an oyster-bed. Without you 
wicked folk there would be no good. How 
should we have known and honoured the 
heroine's worth, but by contrast with your 
worthlessness ? Where would have been 
her fine speeches, but for you to listen to 



at Funerals of Marionettes 327 

them ? Where lay the hero's strength, but 
in resisting temptation of you ? Had not 
you and the Wicked Baronet between you 
robbed him of his estates, falsely accused him 
of crime, he would have lived to the end of 
the play an idle, unheroic, incomplete exist- 
ence. You brought him down to poverty ; 
you made him earn his own bread, — a most 
excellent thing for him ; gave him the op- 
portunity to play the man. But for your 
conduct in the Prologue, of what value 
would have been that fine scene at the end 
of the Third Act, that stirred the house to 
tears and laughter. You and your accom- 
plice, the Wicked Baronet, made the play 
possible. How would Pit and Gallery have 
known they were virtuous, but for the indig- 
nation that came to them, watching your 
misdeeds ? Pity, sympathy, excitement, all 
that goes to the making of a play, you were 
necessary for. It was ungrateful of the 
house to hiss you. 

And you, Mr. Merryman, the painted 
grin worn from your pale lips, you too were 
dissatisfied, if I remember rightly, with your 
part. You wanted to make the people cry. 



328 On Playing of Marches 

not laugh. Was it a higher ambition ? The 
poor tired people ! so much happens outside 
the booth to make them weep, is it not good 
sport to make them merry for a while ? Do 
you remember that old soul in the front row 
of the Pit? How she laughed when you 
sat down on the pie ! I thought she would 
have to be carried out. I heard her talking 
to her companion as they passed the stage- 
door on their way home. " I have not 
laughed, my dear, till to-night,'* she was say- 
ing, the good, gay tears still in her eyes, " since 
the day poor Sally died." Was not that 
alone worth the old stale tricks you so hated ? 
Aye, they were commonplace and conven- 
tional, those antics of yours that made us 
laugh ; are not the antics that make us weep 
commonplace and conventional also ? Are 
not all the plays, played since the booth was 
opened, but of one pattern, the plot old- 
fashioned now, the scenes now commonplace ^ 
Hero, villain, cynic, — are their parts so much 
the fresher ? The love duets, are they so very 
new? The death-bed scenes, would you 
call them ^//commonplace ? Hate and 
Anger and Wrong, — are (heir voices new 



at Funerals of Marionettes 329 

to the booth ? What are you waiting for, 
people ? a play with a plot that is novel, with 
characters that have never strutted before ? 
It will be ready for you, perhaps, when you 
are ready for it, with new tears and new 
laughter. 

You, Mr. Merryman, were the true phi- 
losopher. You saved us from forgetting 
the reality when the friction grew somewhat 
strenuous. How we all applauded your gag 
in answer to the hero, when, bewailing his 
sad fate, he demanded of heaven how much 
longer he was to suffer evil fortune. " Well, 
there cannot be much more of it in store for 
you," you answered him ; " it 's nearly nine 
o'clock already, and the show closes at ten." 
And, true to your prophecy, the curtain fell 
at the time appointed, and his troubles were 
of the past. You showed us the truth behind 
the mask. When pompous Lord Shallow, 
in ermine and wig, went to take his seat 
amid the fawning crowd, you pulled the 
chair from under him, and down he sat 
plump on the floor. His robe flew open ; 
his wig flew off. No longer he awed us. 
His aped dignity fell from him ; we saw him 



3 30 On Playing of Marches 

a stupid-eyed, bald little man ; he imposed 
no longer upon us. It is your fool who is 
the only true wise man. 

Yours was the best part in the play, 
Brother Merryman, had you and the audi- 
ence but known it. But you dreamt of a 
showier part, where you loved and fought. 
I have heard you now and again, when you 
did not know I was near, shouting with 
sword in hand before your looking-glass. 
You had thrown your motley aside to don a 
dingy red coat ; you were the hero of the 
play ; you performed the gallant deeds ; you 
made the noble speeches. I wonder what 
the play would be like, were we all to write 
our own parts. There would be no clowns, 
no singing chambermaids. We would all 
be playing lead in the centre of the stage, 
with the lime-light exclusively devoted to 
ourselves. Would it not be so ? 

What grand acting parts they are, these 
characters we write for ourselves alone in 
our dressing-rooms. We are always brave 
and noble, — wicked sometimes, but if so, in 
a great, high-minded way ; never in a mean 
or little way. What wondrous deeds we do. 



at Funerals of Marionettes 331 

while the house looks on and marvels ! Now 
we are soldiers, leading armies to victory. 
What if we die ! it is in the hour of triumph, 
and a nation is left to mourn. Not in some 
forgotten skirmish do we ever fall; not for 
some " affair of outposts " do we give our 
blood, our very name unmentioned in the de- 
spatches home. Now we are passionate lovers, 
well losing a world for love, — a very different 
thing to being a laughter-provoking co-re- 
spondent in a sordid divorce case. 

And the house is always crowded when 
we play. Our fine speeches always fall on 
sympathetic ears ; our brave deeds are noted 
and applauded. It is so different in the 
real performance. So often we play our 
parts to empty benches, or if a thin house 
be present, they misunderstand, and laugh 
at the pathetic passages. And when our 
finest opportunity comes, the royal box, in 
which he or she should be present to watch 
us, is vacant. 

Poor little dolls ! how seriously we take 
ourselves, not knowing the springs that stir 
our bosoms are but clockwork, not seeing the 
wires to which we dance ! Poor little mario- 



33 2 On Playing of Marches 

nettes ! shall we talk together, I wonder, when 
the lights of the booth are out ? 

We are little wax dollies with hearts. We 
are little tin soldiers with souls. Oh, King 
of many toys, are you merely playing with 
us ? Is it only clockwork within us, this 
thing that throbs and aches? Have you 
wound us up but to let us run down ? 
Will you wind us again to-morrow, or leave 
us here to rust? Is it only clockwork to 
which we respond and quiver ? Now we 
laugh, now we cry, now we dance ; our little 
arms go out to clasp one another, our little 
lips kiss, then say good-bye. We strive, and 
we strain, and we struggle. We reach now 
for gold, now for laurel. We call it desire 
and ambition : are they only wires that you 
play ? Will you throw the clockwork aside, 
or use it again; O Master? 

The lights of the booth grow dim. The 
springs are broken that kept our eyes awake. 
The wire that held us erect is snapped, and 
helpless we fall in a heap on the stage. Oh, 
brother and sister dollies that we played be- 
side, where are you ? Why is it so dark and 
silent? Why are we being put into this 



at Funerals of Marionettes 333 

black box ? And hark ! the little doll orches- 
tra — how far away the music sounds ! — 
what is it they are playing ? — 



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